The eighth international Data for Policy conference was held 9 – 11 July, at Imperial College, London. The conference promised a packed programme, with a line-up of more than 130 presenters, speaking on topics ranging from industry’s perspective on open data, to transforming AI into a force for good.
The conference welcomed delegates from six continents, across a range of disciplines and roles, including academia, commerce and government. Of particular note, was the representation from SubSaharan Africa, who made valuable contributions to the conference special track ‘AI, Ethics and Policy Governance in Africa,’ organised by the Global Center on AI Governance.
Data for Policy founder and conference chair Dr Zeynep Engin commented, “It has been an amazing experience to host prominent thought leaders from around the world, shaping an interdisciplinary and cross-sector conversation at the intersection of Data/AI and Policy/Governance in the public interest, and collaborating with many key stakeholders and partners to make this dialogue increasingly more inclusive.”
The conference is the culmination of a year’s work: from launching a call for special track proposals, through peer review of resultant submissions, to the last talk of the conference. This edition was made possible by the contribution of a large number of people, most notably the conference chairs Zeynep Engin, Jon Crowcroft, and Stefaan Verhulst, the Imperial College co-chairs Mark Kennedy and Rossella Arcucci, the Imperial Policy Forum and Pete Ford as conference hosts. They were supported in turn by the Data for Policy team (Emily Gardner, Pinar Ozgen, Servet Yanatma, Diasmer Bloe and Muhammed Faizan Haider), our diligent expert committees and a dedicated team of volunteers.
We also extend our heartfelt thanks to our partner organisations, Cambridge University Press, Data & Policy journal, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft, Smart Data Research UK and the Alan Turing Institute, whose financial contributions ensure increasing diversity and inclusion in our community.
Conference outputs are widely disseminated. We will soon be publishing proceedings from the conference in Data & Policy. In the meantime, our book of abstracts and other content is available through our Zenodo community. In addition, recordings of conference sessions will be made public soon, while videos of individual presentations are currently available on our YouTube channel.