Welcome on board!
Two new perspectives for our Advisory Board
We began a search this year for new voices and fresh perspectives to join our Advisory Board. We were thrilled to hear from many strong candidates interested in helping support the delivery of our mission — To instil a culture of open and responsible data use in governments and its citizens.
It was a hard decision but with the aim of balancing representation from government and civil society and taking steps to approach a more diverse board makeup, we are delighted to welcome two new members: Helen Darbishire, founder and ED of Access Info Europe and Aimee Whitcroft, senior advisor at the New Zealand open government data programme:
Helen is the founder and Executive Director of Access Info Europe, a NGO that promotes the right of access to information in Europe and globally. Helen is a human rights activist, that combines over 25 years of civil society experience with a specialised knowledge of the legal, practical, and policy issues related to access to information, open data, and open government.
Aimee is part of the NZ open government data programme (‘Open Data NZ’), itself part of Stats NZ. Her focuses are on continued open data advocacy and engagement, as well as contributing to the data.govt.nz service. She’s worked for a number of New Zealand’s most prominent scientific, internet/tech-related and government organisations/teams, and has founded, co-founded and lead a number of organisations and initiatives based around open data, open government, open science and related subjects.
2019 will be a critical year and we are excited and honoured that both Helen and Aimee will provide their expertise to supporting the Open Data Charter in cementing political consensus around the idea that just and equitable societies will be built on data that is open by default, coupled with efforts to safeguard privacy and security.
Welcome on board!
