Meet Our Speakers

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Alan Grogan has been a pioneer in the Data and Analytics market for almost 20 years. Named Data and Analytics Leader of the Year in the UK (DataIQ) – 2020. Alan started his career in Barclays before moving to aid RBS' turnaround during the financial crisis, most notably as the Chief Analytics Officer for the Corporate Bank, and RBS' Customer and Product Division. He moved from industry into the consulting sector where he has held leadership roles in Atos and IBM before joining Avanade where he holds multiple European and Global Leadership roles.

Dr Richard Wood

Richard is Head of Modelling and Analytics at NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board. He is also Senior Visiting Research Fellow, University of Bath School of Management.

Talk Title: From data to insight to action: How the NHS is (slowly but surely) catching up

Over the last two decades, there has been a vast improvement in data collected by the NHS. Where information was once kept on paper, it is now stored electronically. Where data was once at aggregate level, it is now of the finer granularity required for richer analysis and linkage at person-level.

While work continues apace – expanding data coverage, frequency and quality – the question must be asked: are we really making the most of this resource, and so justifying its ever-increasing volume? This was a challenge at least partially advanced by Martin Bardsley in his 2017 Health Foundation report, titled “Do we have more data than insight?”. But what’s the point in having insight if we can’t turn it into action? In this talk, I will review a number of analytical projects at my own healthcare system in around Bristol, covering how – through novel application of various quantitative techniques, from random forests to traditional queueing models – we have derived a breadth of insight from a multitude of data sources.

Concluding, I will reflect on the extent to which these efforts have led to demonstrable positive action, and attempt to outline some critical success factors for implementing analytics in practice.

Dr Marie Oldfield, CStat, CSci, APAI, SFHEA, FIScT, is the CEO of Oldfield Consultancy and Senior Lecturer at LSE.

Marie is a recognised, published AI and Ethics Expert with a background in Mathematics and Philosophy. She is a trusted advisor to Government, Defence, and the Legal Sector amongst others. Marie also works at the forefront of Ethical AI, driving improvement and development and is the creator of the new AI Professional Accreditation that benchmarks practice in AI and interdisciplinary modelling.

Marie is Founder of the IST Interdisciplinary Artificial Intelligence Group. She was invited to the Executive Board of the Institute of Science & Technology, to be an Expert Fellow for Sprite+ and a member of the College of Peer Reviewers for Rephrain.

Marie is frequently invited to speak on popular podcasts, panels and at conferences about her experience and research on the development of Ethics in AI and was recently invited to speak at Chatham House on AI and Ethics issues.

She is passionate about giving back to the global community through extensive pro bono work, with a focus on ethical AI, education, poverty, children and mental health.

Talk: Challenges faced by AI Practitioners

What challenges do AI Practitioners face and how can we solve them? Calls for legislation and regulation are accelerating the pace with which we need to get our profession in order. Working with AI and modelling affecting society means you need to not only showcase your skills but prove that you have robust methodology when it comes to your practice, whether you are a philosophy advisor or a computer scientist.

Dr Christina J Phillips is a Senior Lecturer in Business Analytics at the Liverpool Business School, Liverpool John Moores University. She has a diverse background, having tutored in physics and statistics, run her own art and design company, and consulted in business analytics. Her expertise is in mathematical modelling, extended to participative modelling and design.

Dr Phillips' recent work involves Human Centric Analytics design and the development of AI for healthcare, specifically addressing misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has also contributed to the fields of analytics design, participative analytics development, and lean development in semi-process industries. Additionally, Dr Phillips is involved in collaborative metric/process design for ESG reporting and health systems design.

She holds previous positions at the University of Leeds and Siemens Healthineers, has been co-chair of the Problem Structuring Methods SIG at ORS for a number of years and is involved in the OR in Practice SIG as their Senior Designer.

She also sits on the Board of Directors of the society as a trustee and represents the SIGs on General Council. This March, Dr Phillips will be taking over as Co-Chair of the Analytics Network, more about that at AS24!

Workshop: Human Centric Analytics (HCA): A workshop on how to foster the human centred development of analytics that augment human work effectively.

In situations of high uncertainty and high human involvement, it can be difficult to implement analytical tools, on the other hand those tools can serve to reduce and define the uncertainty. To achieve this level of use the human actors involved need to be empowered to understand and utilise the data that they produce and use. This requires both learning and experiment in a safe and creative space.

In this workshop we will use examples from industry interventions to introduce the ideas and concepts around HCA. We will discuss what works and what doesn’t, and why that is, and develop skills around choosing the right structuring methods and analytical approaches for differing situations. Design is a key part of the process, and we will look at ways to keep in mind the iterative and empathetic journey that this helps to facilitate, while also looking at ways to integrate HCA into common working practices such as lean projects.

Please join us for what promises to be an interesting and informative session.

Presenters:

Will Pratt – Will leads the data analytics research and data engineering team at The National Audit Office (NAO). With expertise in large scale data processing and machine learning, Will’s focus is on driving innovation in audit. Before he joined the NAO in 2018, Will worked in the technology sector as a Data Scientist and Software Engineer.

Hisham Taj – Hisham leads the horizon scanning approach from within the modelling network at NAO. Having worked as a machine learning researcher prior to joining the NAO, Hisham has expertise in software deployment and deep learning.

Workshop: How much AI is in Government – and how is it audited?

The session will open with an introduction to the different types of AI in government, as taken from our research in the VFM paper “Use of artificial intelligence in government.” This session will then primarily focus on audit approaches for machine learning models, drawing on research undertaken with other public audit bodies internationally. We hope to stimulate and facilitate discussion about technical methods in algorithmic evaluation, as well as less technical concepts associated with evaluating whether machine learning methods/tools have been appropriately deployed into public service delivery.

Anne Liret

Anne Liret is currently research manager in Operational Transformation and Artificial Intelligence in BT’s Applied Research. Her research for 27 years, includes problem modelling and solving using AI and Optimisation techniques, with a focus on sustainable resource scheduling problems in dynamic context, interactive explainable AI-based decision-making, context-aware self-learning models for real-time diagnosis. Her models have helped transforming operations in field engineering services, asset maintenance and service assurance. She has PhD in AI and formal computation, and a strong experience in applying AI, to transform telecommunications services operations.

Since 2020, she has been studying approaches for reusing explanation experiences, recommending explanation strategies that suit the needs of users, and improving understandings about how explanation is perceived by human-being. She is a member of the European Chistera project called iSee addressing this topic and building an ethical responsibility framework for systems and human-being in “XAI” experience.

Workshop: The difficult task of building fit-for-user explanations for AI models in business

Ian joined ICAEW as Head of Data Analytics and Tech in March 2022, looking at the role that analytics and technology solutions play in the profession, and supporting the ICAEW’s members in their exploration and development of knowledge around technology.

Prior to this, Ian worked for over 10 years at PwC in Data Analytics. During this time, he focused on a number of areas including building analytics solutions using SQL and Alteryx, development of robust, automated ETL processes supporting the firm’s award-winning Halo suite of applications, and, more recently, taking a lead role in Data Acquisition across the firm (streamlining the process of obtaining data from clients’ systems). His various roles involved him working across a wide range of audit and non-audit clients, as well as having responsibility for hundreds of staff in specialist teams across the UK and abroad. Ian also played an active role in the development and delivery of several team, departmental and firmwide training courses, with digital upskilling being an area he is particularly passionate about as he supported the pilot and rollout of the firm’s Digital Academies programme.

Before joining PwC, Ian trained and worked as a music teacher in Greater Manchester, delivering classroom and instrumental lessons to children of all ages. He has kept up his interest for music as a keen amateur musician, playing in various orchestras around London and taking part in the PwC Pantomimev7 including the role of Musical Director for the 30^th show in 2015/16, leading 15 performances to over 10,000 disadvantaged children in London, Birmingham and Birr, Ireland.

Workshop: The analytical future of accounting, and the importance of getting good data

In this session, Ian will share insights from the world of accounting and finance, and the journey that ICAEW's members are going on in their adoption of analytical capabilities.

Increasingly, the role of finance professionals is becoming one of data collection and manipulation, but this requires working with data from a wide range of sources. Auditors and accountants in particular are expected to obtain data from a variety of client systems in order to perform their roles effectively, but this can be a challenging task.

Fortunately, there are some interesting solutions to this challenge, designed to make it as seamless as possible for accountants and auditors to get their hands on the data that they need. The session will explore some of the key concepts around data extraction, the capabilities being utilised, the obstacles that accountants are faced with, and crucially why getting this first step right is so important to the future of accountancy.