Meet Senior Research Fellow Richard Pope
A get to know you series introducing the digital HKS fellows
digital HKS is an initiative at Harvard Kennedy School committed to teaching public leaders how to understand the relationship between technology, data, and the public interest by training them to assimilate how to design, build, and engage with digital technologies as they relate to civic participation, equity, governance, and accountability. The fellowship provides a space for thinkers and doers in the sphere of digital technology to explore ideas through research and engagement with the Harvard community at-large.
Richard Pope
Richard Pope was part of the founding team at the UK Government Digital Service, working as product manager for the first versions of GOV.UK, which went on to win the Design of the Year award in 2013, and co-authoring the Digital by Default Service Standard, which all UK government digital services must meet. He worked with policy and delivery teams across the UK government redesigning government services in policy areas as diverse as welfare, land registration, and employment.
He was involved in the early days of the UK civic tech scene and worked at various start-ups as a technologist and designer, including printing company moo.com and data science platform scraperwiki.com. Most recently, he served as COO of IF, a specialist digital rights and ethics consultancy.
The way Pope puts it, digital platforms are changing the way society works and, in time, they will fundamentally change how government works. The aim of his project is to explore the opportunities and risks of digital platforms for government, and the implications for trust and accountability.
How do you hope your work will impact the world?
Through this fellowship with digital HKS, Pope hopes to accomplish many things that include:
- Give digital service units resources to help them build good platforms.
- Develop common language for talking about government platforms.
- Stimulate a conversation about the institutional, societal and democratic implications of digital platforms in government and the private sector.
- Test ways of explaining the value and implications of digital platforms to politicians and leaders
Do you have any book recommendations that relate to technology?
- Getting Real by 37 Signals
- The Stack: on Software and Sovereignty by Benjamin Bratton
- The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy by Mariana Mazzucato
Learn more about Richard by reading some of his work:
Designing Digital Services that are Accountable, Understood, and Trusted
Data: Government, privacy, and understanding
Ethics, Markets, and Registers
You can also keep up with Pope’s work by clicking here.
