Previewing Data for Policy 2020: 15th — 17th September

Today marks the start of Data for Policy 2020: an international conference exploring the impact of data science innovation for policy and governance. It promises to be a stimulating event, as well as a new challenge for the organisers: its fifth edition and the first that’s happening entirely virtually.

The three day conference, running 15th — 17th September, will bring together over 200 delegates from more than 30 institutions from academia, government, civil society, the private sector and intergovernmental organisations.

Among the many highlights in the programme are the keynotes:

• Dark Data by David Hand (Imperial College London)
• Computational Epidemiology at the Time of Covid-19 by Alessandro Vespignani (Northeastern University)
• Philosophy and Ethics of Brain-inspired AI by Yi Zheng (Chinese Academy of Sciences)

The conference features over twenty sessions, including the following:

• An opening plenary chaired by Barbara Ubaldi (OECD), featuring speakers Jeffrey Schlagenhauf (OECD), Sir Peter Gluckmann (Former Chief Scientific Advisor, New Zealand), Zuena Aziz (Prime Minister’s Office, Bangladesh) and Jeanine Vos (GSMA)
• Data Governance in the Public Interest — individual presentations and a special panel, organised by the London School of Economics and the Ada Lovelace Institute
• Data, analytics and digital transformation in the private sector — a panel discussion organised the UCL School of Management
• For good measure: The challenges of quantifying complex problems for policymaking — individual persentations and a special session organised by Leiden University
• Opportunities and Challenges for Data-Driven Research in Response to the COVID-19 Crisis — presentations and discussion organised by the Alan Turing Institute
• Data technologies and governance frameworks used for gathering, storing, managing, processing, analyzing and sharing data in the public administrations — individual presentations organised by the Lisbon Council and the GovLab, NYU
• For good measure: The challenges of quantifying complex problems for policymaking — individual presentations and a special session organised by Leiden University
• Data Quality and Development Policy — individual presentations organised by the University of Washington
• Data Governance for Innovation for Sustainable Smart Cities: Opportunities and Challenges in Public Policy and Institutional Design — two sessions of individual presentations organised by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
• The closing plenary, chaired by C. Leigh Anderson (University of Washington) and featuring speakers Katie Atkinson (University of Liverpool), Kamau Bobb (Google), Torbjörn Fredriksson (UN Conference on Trade and Development) and Himanshu Nagpal ( Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)

The full programme can be seen here. Many of this year’s presentations can be found online, and openly accessible, via the Data for Policy community page on Zenodo.

Whether you are registered or not, follow the discussion on Twitter and share your thoughts via #DataforPolicy2020

This is the blog for Data & Policy (cambridge.org/dap), a peer-reviewed open access journal published by Cambridge University Press in association with Data for Policy, exploring the interface of data science and governance. Read on for five ways to contribute to Data & Policy.