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Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation Minutes - Board Meeting 15

Updated 12 October 2023

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/board-meeting-agendas-and-minutes/centre-for-data-ethics-and-innovation-minutes-board-meeting-15

24th September 2020

Remote Board Meeting[footnote 1]

Attendees (dialling in)

  • Roger Taylor (RT)
  • Rt Revd Dr Steven Croft (SC)
  • Luciano Floridi (LF)
  • Dame Patricia Hodgson (PH)
  • Prof Lord Robert Winston (RW)
  • Dr Adrian Weller (AW)
  • Richard Sargeant (RS)
  • Dr Susan Liautaud (SL)
  • Kriti Sharma (KS)
  • Edwina Dunn (ED)
  • Baroness Kate Rock (KR)
  • Dame Glenys Stacey (GS)

CDEI staff:

  • Ollie Buckley (OB)
  • Jessica Smith (JS)
  • Mark Durkee (MD)
  • Louise Pakseresht (LP)
  • Benedict Dellot (BD)
  • Sam Cannicott (SC)
  • Alex Lawrence-Archer (ALA)
  • Ben Lyons (BL)
  • CDEI Team Members

Item 1: Chair’s Welcome

The Chair (RT) welcomed the Board to the remote meeting.

There were a number of new interests declared.

The Board was content with the minutes of the previous meeting subject to minor changes.

Actions:

  • Board Members to contact CDEI with updated interests for publication in the register of interests on gov.uk.
  • CDEI team to publish last meeting’s minutes on gov.uk.

Item 2: CDEI Update

The executive director thanked the Board for their support over the summer and introduced JS as CDEI’s new deputy director for strategy. The executive team provided the following updates:

  • Board terms are due to end in November and CDEI will launch a process to update Board membership in the months ahead. In the meantime, the executive are developing ways to better involve the Board in CDEI’s substantive work.

  • CDEI is producing more outputs. AIM is expanding its repository, holding forums and conducting horizon scanning work. The Board approved a second phase of the Active Choices work.

  • CDEI is considering how to approach a forecasted underspend in this financial year’s budget. The Board offered ideas for spending. They identified spending opportunities such as further international work, commissioning more accessible content for public engagement and new research methodologies, such as hosting ‘public dialogues’.

Actions:

  • CDEI to consider the Board’s suggestions for expenditure and seek Board approval for the approach to budget underspend.

Item 3: Next Steps on the Bias Review

The Chair said that the intention is to publish the Bias Review as soon as CDEI is able. The Board:

  • Discussed the key messages and recommendations of the review.

  • Noted that the Review should be clear that just being unbiased is not enough for a data-driven technology to be considered ‘fair’ or ‘ethical’ but it is a critical factor.

  • Agreed that CDEI should publish the Bias Review as soon as possible.

  • Agreed that the Preface should be authored by the Board as a whole and will require input from the Board.

Actions:

  • CDEI to ensure Board is content with Preface and core narrative of the Bias Review and ensure timely publication.

Item 4: Functions and Work Programme

The executive set out how CDEI should expand to meet the requirements of its current remit, especially hiring project management and technical staff, and how that informs CDEI’s Spending Review bids. The executive then posed questions about how CDEI should position itself in the context of relevant emerging Government strategies. The Board:

  • Agreed that CDEI should continue to pursue independence of Government in the medium term;

  • Agreed that CDEI should further assert its existing freedom to determine which partnerships to engage in, and the terms of that engagement;

  • Agreed that CDEI’s remit should continue to focus on ethics and innovation. All noted that innovation, by its nature, often presents new ethical questions and challenges.

Item 5: AOB and Closing

  1. The Board meeting happened remotely via online video conference due to Government guidance to work from home, in response to Covid-19, coming into effect from 17th March. ↩

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