NATWEST GROUP'S WENDY REDSHAW AND KARI-ANNE CLAYTON ON TECHNOLOGY, PEOPLE AND THE RISE OF THE CDIO
“I'M ABLE TO HELP THE BUSINESS AND ITS PEOPLE THRIVE"
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There’s something undeniably inspiring about meeting people at the forefront of significant change or who are pioneering a different or innovative approach to their work. To hear them speak with such passion about their journey, the reasons for the transformative work they’re doing, the people they lead and who will benefit from their dedication to driving purpose and value is the icing on the cake.
Take NatWest Group’s Wendy Redshaw and Kari-Anne Clayton as a perfect example. Our cover feature this issue explores in more detail the transformational and strategic innovation for digital and technology that the pair are driving at the bank through the pioneering of a newly emerging and future-facing role: the Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO). This innovative approach to digital leadership
is designed to steer organisations through the complexities of modern digital adoption and, at NatWest, it’s being driven by Redshaw and Clayton’s vision of customer obsession, building a relationship bank and filling it with moments that matter. Check it out on page 14.
You’ll find plenty of other moments of inspiration and passion in this issue.
Like Telkom’s Keneilwe Gwabeni, whose deeply personal story about how encountering corporate inequality has made her dedicated to leading by example and inspiring women and young people in technology. Similar personal threads –whether a desire to make a real difference, a passion for encouraging different ways of thinking or a genuine love of technology – are found in our interviews with NHS Blood and Transplant’s Dan Jeffery, Barry Green and Norfolk County Council’s Kurt Frary respectively. In all, it’s inspiring stuff.
As always, enjoy the issue.
Matt. Content Director
Matt High
Creative Directors
Daniel Crawford
Steve Shipley
Marketing Director
Jack Pascall
Project Director
Manuel Navarro
Managing Directors
Charlotte Clarke
James Pepper
06 | INSIGHT EXEC SUMMARY
News, views and tech insight
14 | INTERVIEW NATWEST GROUP
On technology, people and the rise of the Chief Digital Information Officer
46 | PORTFOLIO TECH YOU NEED
Innovations for work, leisure and the environmentally conscious
56 | ENTREPRENEUR SUMAN KANUGANTI
You don’t solve the human, you solve the problem: meet your personal AI
58 | INTERVIEW TELKOM
On women in tech, leading by example and inspiring the next generation
14 56 46 58 74 CONTENTS //
74 | TECHNOLOGY
82 | INTERVIEW
NHS BLOOD AND TRANSPLANT
On cybersecurity, data in healthcare and making a real difference
96 | INNOVATOR
ENERGY VAULT
The future of renewable energy?
98 | INTERVIEW
NORFOLK COUNTY COUNCIL
On public sector innovation and the importance of connectivity
110 | DISRUPTOR
MOJO LENS
Our eyes are the future
112 | INTERVIEW
BARRY GREEN
On data as an enabler, and people and culture in strategy
122 | CITY GUIDE
48 HRS: MADRID
For business and pleasure
132 | CALENDAR EVENTS
The best events for 2022
The future of road-going vehicles looks bright, if the new Formula E Gen3 race car is anything to go by. Unveiled in Monaco in April and developed by a team of sustainability experts and engineers, the Gen3 is designed to show the potential that high performance and sustainability can bring, including several cutting-edge innovations that will find their way from track to road. To name a few: the most advanced and sustainable electric vehicle batteries to date, the use of recycled carbon fibre in manufacture, ultra-high speed charging and close to 95% power efficiency from an electric motor.
www.fiaformulae.com
Prior to the COVID pandemic, leaders in enterprise tech were growing twice as fast as those that weren’t up to speed; those same leaders that have doubled down on their tech investments are now growing as much as five times faster, says Accenture. Then, there are the ‘leapfroggers’, a group of leaders who are compressing digital transformation and growing four times faster than laggards as a result of three strategic steps: adopting an innovation-led mindset and prioritising collaboration, building systems strength by moving to the cloud and extending reach by expanding access to technology across functions.
www.accenture.com
$44bn
the cost of Elon Musk’s muchdiscussed Twitter takeover, all in the name of ‘free speech’
Digital burnout remains a persistent challenge for global employees following the shift to remote or hybrid working. According to the Anatomy of Work Index 2022 survey by Asana, the lines between work and life are blurrier than ever as a result of a lack of clarity and increasing digital distractions. Asana surveyed 10,000 workers worldwide and found 40% are spending too much time on video calls, 42% on emails and 52% are multitasking more during virtual meetings.
www.businesswire.com
Fashion companies could invest as much as 3.5% of their revenues in technology by 2030, says McKinsey. Specifically, it points to the use of tech to gain a competitive edge in customer-facing activities and employing innovations like robotics, advanced analytics and in-store apps to streamline processes and create new customer experiences. Key trends for industry insiders to watch out for are consumer engagement with the metaverse, the growth of personalisation technologies, connected stores and traceability systems.
www.mckinsey.com
The eight capabilities of the connected enterprise, according to KPMG:
Spotify will be the first music streaming brand to have an official presence in online game platform and creation system Roblox. The metaverse-like platform, which lets players interact, create and exist in virtual worlds will include ‘Spotify Island’, a place where artists and fans can play interactive quests, buy merchandise and unlock exclusive content. In true Roblox style, creativity will be front and centre, with a dedicated ‘stage’ area including beat makers, confetti, colour and the chance to perform [in a meta-way, obviously].
www.newsroom.spotify.com
Why don’t VR headsets ever include your mouth in their fun and games?
Granted, not one of life’s burning questions but, in the quest for greater immersion, the mouth has a lot to offer. So say researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, who have devised a VR system for the mouth that uses haptic effects to simulate raindrops or water splashing over the lips.
www.cs.cmu.edu
Where there’s a job, there’s a robot. Take railways in Japan and the giant, transformer-like humanoid robot that’s taking over infrastructure work too risky for humans as an example. Using motion-tracking technology, its ‘driver’ can gain kinetic feel for its work thus joining human and humanoid in perfect, productivity-improving harmony. It looks cool too.
www.thenextweb.com
Google reportedly fires Satrajit Chatterjee, an AI researcher and member of its ‘Brain’ team, after he disputed the validity of a research paper.
Dell Technologies and Snowflake form an ‘industryfirst’ partnership to give customers greater flexibility when operating in multicloud environments.
Apple accuses ‘stealth-mode’ startup Rivos Inc. of poaching its engineers in order to obtain trade secrets used to develop its own homegrown chip designs.
The European Commission presents a draft law on a ‘European health data area’ that defines rules for digital medicine and the European health data space.
Amazon ’s planned broadband satellite unit, Project Kuiper, purchases up to 83 planned launches to transport satellites to space over a five-year period.
NatWest’s Wendy Redshaw and Kari-Anne Clayton discuss technology, people, the rise of the Chief Digital Information Officer role and its influence on the future of digital transformation
WENDY REDSHAW , (STANDING)
CHIEF DIGITAL INFORMATION OFFICER, RETAIL BANKING, NATWEST GROUP
KARI-ANNE CLAYTON , (SITTING)
HEAD OF TRANSFORMATION & STRATEGY, RETAIL BANKING CDIO, NATWEST GROUP
Do what you love, and you’ll never work another day in your life’. As the saying goes. Whatever your opinions on motivational sentiments and their value, there’s something undeniably inspiring about people for whom an absolute passion for their subject, their work or their vision drives collective success, brings real purpose and value to others, or is the catalyst for meaningful and lasting change.
That’s certainly the case for NatWest Group’s Wendy Redshaw and Kari-Anne Clayton. In the near-hour I was fortunate enough to spend with Redshaw discussing behavioural psychology, people, perfectionism and the intricacies of servant leadership, her love for her role and the work she and her DigiTech colleagues are undertaking at the bank was infectious. So too was Clayton’s eagerness to talk at length on the importance and impact of an effective and purposeful transformational culture, the shifting digital landscape and the requirements it places on leaders and organisations in every industry. The results of their shared ethic are obvious. Both are vastly experienced and respected leaders who, at NatWest Group, are driving transformational and strategic innovation for digital and technology in the Retail Bank business through the pioneering of a newly emerging, future-facing role: the Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO).
HCL Technologies is a next-generation global technology company that helps enterprises reimagine their businesses for the digital age
Our technology products and services are built on four decades of innovation, with a world-renowned management philosophy, a strong culture of invention and risk-taking, and a relentless focus on customer relationships. HCL also takes pride in its many diversity, social responsibility, sustainability, and education initiatives. Through our worldwide network of R&D facilities and co-innovation labs, global delivery capabilities, and over 208,000+ ‘Ideapreneurs’ across 52 countries, HCL delivers holistic services across industry verticals to leading enterprises, including 250 of the Fortune 500 and 650 of the Global 2000.
Our holistic Mode 1-2-3 strategy forms the backbone of these three business units to help enterprises navigate the digital age with ease. It is the core aspect of our ‘Digital Enterprise 4.0’ focus – aimed at offering holistic services to our clients to meet the technology needs of their present while readying them to be future-ready.
The pair have recently completed and published an in-depth paper outlining in detail this innovative new approach to digital leadership and how it’s steering organisations through the complexities of modern digital adoption, rapidly evolving consumer expectations and their influence on transformation and innovation, and the structural evolution necessary to remain competitive in such an environment. Theirs is a vision of customer obsession, of creating a relationship
bank suitable for both the digital present and future, and filling it with moments that matter, and which has humans at the centre complemented by technology and digital. We joined them both to discuss the influencing factors in the emergence of the CDIO, how the role can bridge digital business, technology and people as companies navigate increasingly complex transformation environments, and their own CDIO journeys at NatWest Group.
“Leadership today, and for the future digital technological revolutions we’ll see, will require dynamic, unique, innovative and forward-thinking approaches”
—
WENDY REDSHAW
Introduction
This case study outlines the transformation journey of a client’s home buying business process. The client is a leading retail and commercial bank in the UK and Ireland, with a customer base of around 19 million. The client’s vision was to be transformed into a digital multi-channel lender of the future to deliver long-term value to its customers.
Business challenges
• Changing customer expectations
• Wider adoption of open banking
• Fintechs and start-ups bringing in disruptive technologies
• Disparate systems hindering seamless experience in mortgage origination
Key Drivers
• Improve customer experience through simplified and streamlined user journeys
• Providing a digital self-service capability to customers to help reduce in-person branch visits (required for COVID-19 pandemic) and drive down the inbound call-center volume
• Upgrade the technology stack and optimize IT operating costs
• Increase throughput and reduce release times to respond quickly to regulatory changes
• Focus on end-to-end digital solutions which improve the time to market
The home buying experience was reimaged with a three-pronged approach as given below.
HCL with the client successfully rolled out multiple key features to achieve the desired outcomes.
• In-house credit decisioning system
• Modernized affordability calculator
• Modernized Buy to let (BTL) calculator
• New features in product switch
Key Business benefits
• Transformed lending experience for customers through an API-based decision in principle (DIP), giving customers an indication of what the bank will lend to them in seconds
• The entire transformation was accomplished within 10 calendar months that greatly reduced the time to market of these critical and customer friendly business interventions.
• Customers can now use digital solutions to make digital payments and overpayments to their mortgage online via the mobile app and instantly see the reduced monthly payments
• Double increase in daily over-payment lump sum transaction volumes through digital channels
• Enriched origination experience through new mortgage origination platform
The bank introduced the CDIO construct at the start of 2020, creating four main CDIOs across the NatWest Group, each aligned to a business franchise who, together with the Chief Technology Officer, Chief Data & Analytics Officer and other heads of technology work as ‘The Guardians’ – a network-style collaboration structure of technologists that sits across the group. Redshaw, who has been with the organisation since 2018 having previously been the CIO for Collaborative Technology Solutions at Deutsche Bank, holds the position of CDIO, Retail Banking. Clayton joined NatWest two years ago, shortly before the world was turned upside down by COVID-19. She holds the role of
Head of Transformation & Strategy, Retail Banking CDIO.
“My remit covers the breadth of digital and technology for the Retail Bank across a broad product and channel suite, such as Home Buying and Ownership, Everyday Banking, Short Term Borrowing, Digital Channels, New Customer Propositions, Shared Experience, and Physical Channels,” Redshaw explains. “I also hold a nonexecutive director position for the NatWest Trustee & Depositary Services entity, and am on the Board of Trustees of TechSheCan and a Board Director of Rooster Money, a recent Youth proposition acquisition through which we actively help educate younger customers on managing their money. The CDIO is about embodying the triumvirate between business, technology and people leadership, while also focusing on unlocking the digital value within our customer journeys both now, and sustainably for the future.”
This, Redshaw adds, is achieved through fostering purpose and commitment across multiple areas and driving digitalisation, re-use and innovation, while also transforming the organisation safely so as to enable simplification and multi-modal delivery patterns – a task, she jokes, that’s easier to say than to do. “From my perspective as a leader, it’s about taking my experiences of the different roles around digital, transformation, technology and the business and weaving them together into something that’s new and
“My goal is to bring unique and meaningful insight into how individuals, organisations, even governments, can and must continuously transform purposefully”
— KARI-ANNE CLAYTON
The Retail Banking market is a rapidly evolving market with continually changing customer expectations. When NatWest Retail wanted to re-imagine their customer experience to enable a digitally led, data-driven approach, Accenture partnered with the bank to co-create a strategic vision for Customer Engagement. For over 8 years, Accenture have worked with NatWest in creating personalized, seamless journeys on the Bank’s websites, as well enabling self-sufficiency for Bank teams to serve personalized, digital customer communications.
• Unifying NatWest’s customer insights across unauthenticated and authenticated customers, and human interactions, in a personalised manner, serving these activities into the customer channel-of-choice.
• Providing the bank with digital self-service tools used by both customers and colleagues alike to perform everyday tasks;
• Enabling a digital first approach for customers, supported by virtual assistants and customer insights to allow customers to self-serve but, importantly, provide a frictionless transition to an assisted channel if needed;
• Providing a single experience for customers across branches, RMs and call centers underpinned by data, automation and cognitive services to enable paperless journeys.
The key enabler of this is Data and AI. Data to drive insights, next best actions, and the 360 degree view of the customer; and Artificial Intelligence to provide virtual assistants to customers and colleagues alike.
As one of NatWest Retail’s strategic delivery partners, Accenture is delivering a bold approach to customer care across the entire retail bank: from branches to call centers, via a data-led, digital transformation that drives a great experience for customers and colleagues alike and sustainable growth for the Retail bank.
Accenture does this through several key transformative initiatives, working alongside the Franchises and Chief Data Office:
• Ensuring NatWest has a data driven full view of the customer which provides colleagues with the right data, customer insights, sentiment analysis and conversational intelligence to make the right decisions and better serve the customer;
This data-led approach to customer engagement is allowing NatWest to move to a differentiated and market-leading position to deliver on their purpose of being a sustainable relationship bank for the digital world with customer and colleagues at the core of the transformation.
“The CDIO is about embodying the triumvirate between business, technology and people leadership, while also focusing on unlocking the digital value within our customer journeys both now, and sustainably for the future”
— WENDY REDSHAW
What if companies in creating a humane, sustainable
They can
That’s why Wipro is committing Net-Zero Greenhouse Gas emissions emissions to zero by 2040 and Net-Zero
and we do. committing to contribute to planetary emissions targets by reducing its and a 55% reduction by 2030.
companies could play a role sustainable & resilient future for all?
exciting. Leadership today, and for the future digital technological revolutions we’ll see, will require dynamic, unique, innovative and forward-thinking approaches. As CDIO I’m able to help the business and our customers thrive, while doing my job in a way that’s authentically me.”
Clayton and Redshaw have a close working relationship built upon their shared time together at Deutsche Bank, prior to their joining NatWest Group. Clayton came to the organisation in 2020 and, as Head of Transformation & Strategy, Retail Banking CDIO, is responsible for the overarching strategies and multifaceted approaches necessary as both she, Redshaw and NatWest Group continue to evolve and grow the CDIO construct.
“I partner with senior leaders and executives to optimise CDIO frameworks, working to improve the interplay of team dynamics and cohesion and ensure our customers and colleagues are at the heart
of all our decision making,” Clayton says. “There’s eight or nine key transformational areas of focus such as customer delivery, risk and resilience, performance, people and culture, communications and leadership, as well as our Horizon Technology Strategies, that will build our view of being a relationship bank for a digital world – and all of these directly link to our core purpose and our organisational focus areas; climate, enterprise and learning. My goal is to bring unique and meaningful insight into how individuals, organisations, even governments, can and must continuously transform purposefully.”
The need for continuous, purpose-led transformation is a key catalyst for the emergence of the CDIO. Since 2018, businesses like NatWest Group, Nike, HMRC, Maersk and UBS have created CDIOs, recognising that in order to execute on any significant transformation, whether organisational, technological or cultural,
Businesses like NatWest Group, Nike, HMRC, Maersk and UBS have created CDIOs, recognising that in order to execute on any significant transformation, whether organisational, technological or cultural, and remain relevant and competitive, the appropriate leadership model and business structure are essential
There is a huge link between food and peace. Between the way food is produced and the way in which peaceful societies are built. So how can you ensure that food systems are laying the foundation for peace? At Fix the Food Festival, green chefs, food activists, Nobel Peace Prize laureates, and business leaders shared their perspectives on this topic.
The Nobel Peace Center and the World Food Programme (WFP) co-hosted Fix the Food from September 24-25th. The WFP was recognised with a Nobel Peace Prize in 2020, putting the relationship between food and peace on the international agenda. This festival explored solutions and partnerships for ending world hunger and providing food security for all.
Sustainability is present in everything that we do. It pushes, inspires and questions us, whether we’re rethinking mobility or rescoping the product portfolio of one of the biggest toy manufacturers in the world. It’s also one of the main drivers for many of our projects. That’s why we choose to engage with businesses and organisations ready to make a responsible impact on People and the Planet. Learn more about our perspective on sustainability here.
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In building a relationship bank for a Digital world, NatWest Group set out to provide their mobile banking app customers more control over their finances. As part of NatWest’s strategy to help customers thrive, and build their financial capability, new features were added to the NatWest Mobile App to offer personalised, near real time insights to customers based on their individual historic transaction data.
These insights were fueled by a powerful, purpose-built AI based backend engine that offers stateless and stateful access to data and functions to:
• Summarise vast amounts of customer transaction activity
• Categorise, decode and analyse user transactions
• Combine the transactional data with predictive Al algorithms
This AI platform was ground-breaking in its intricate use of large data sets and applications. Through partnership and collaboration, Infosys and NatWest embarked on this journey together by implementing an Agile in-sprint and shift left methodology with an end-to-end automated test solution.
Infosys worked with the bank to offer validation and assurance across various layers like Middleware and Backend.
Open- source tools were used to achieve CI-CD pipeline and to gauge application fault against quality, feature, and performance. Overall, this test solution helped the bank to successfully achieve:
• Faster time to market: Aided improvement in release frequency –14 releases last year
• Improved reach: Provided full transactional analytical capability to all 16M retail bank customers with insights reaching all 6.2M digitally active consented customers
• Cost savings: Cumulative ~40% Cost Savings in validation services against platform budget by using inline automation
Recent Industry endorsement and recognition of our successful partnership with NatWest
Winner: UiPath Award for Excellence in Banking & Insurance Automation
Winner: European Software Testing Award
(ESTA) 2021 under the category “Testing Team of The Year’
and remain relevant and competitive, the appropriate leadership model and business structure are essential.
This way of thinking is influenced by the pace of digital innovation and technological advancement, which continues exponentially. Since the beginnings of the digital revolution of the 1980s, technological innovation has been unceasing – we have moved at breakneck speed through two ‘digital industrial revolutions’ and stand collectively on the cusp of a fifth. We have witnessed the growth of Amazon from bookseller to global tech firm, the arrival and influence of social media, the launch of IBM Watson and AI, widespread robotic automation, data exchange in manufacturing technologies and processes, the extensive use of cyberphysical systems, IoT, cloud computing and more.
Beyond the horizon, a new wave of innovations and the rapid evolution of known and unknown variables will further disrupt organisations over the next five years; the 5th Industrial Revolution will see Spatial and Quantum computing set new precedents for human-datamachine interactions, edge computing combined with 5G will transform consumer data and IoT, and our exploration of nano and biotech will continue at pace. This will be a period of personalisation underpinned by a greater focus on innovation, purpose and inclusivity to create a more sustainable business model.
“The sustainable business puts a threedimensional lens on the classic business triangle that’s rooted in value proposition, value creation and the delivery of value capture,” Clayton elaborates. “Thematically, the 5th Industrial Revolution can be characterised as innovation, purpose and inclusivity and, when combined with the digital 4.0 technologies, it paves the way for an incredibly powerful shift in society. The value proposition facet of the sustainable business model is about value for the product or service, value in the relationship and the value proposition for customer, society and environment. If you can’t demonstrate these facets, then your competitors will.”
“Customers will see new features in apps that aren’t related to financial services, and they’ll want the same or better new features in their banking app immediately”
—
KARI-ANNE CLAYTON
“A leader who can rally, inspire, innovate and who is also authentic and genuine across a plethora of disciplines is needed”
—
KARI-ANNE CLAYTON
The consumer, say Redshaw and Clayton, is at the heart of this rapidly evolving digital landscape. We are more digitally savvy, more connected and – courtesy of companies such as Amazon, Google and others – have an insatiable appetite for friction-free, high-calibre and seamless customer experiences. For transforming organisations, this means the need to analyse and reconsider the design and development of digital touchpoints and the ways in which customers are presented with information.
“With the advent of social media like Facebook and Twitter we started to see a shift in, not only consumer patterns and ecommerce – which was greatly accelerated with the launch of the first iPhone in 2007 – but human behaviour more broadly,” notes Redshaw. “Previously, consumer patterns were very much focused on the clustering and purchasing of items at specific locations, doing banking at the bank for example. As the digitalisation race began, ease of use, user experience, seamless and frictionless website and app design spread like wildfire and, in response, organisations like NatWest were quick to adapt, driven by the ever-evolving digital requirements and consumer expectations.”
“It’s one of the key drivers for change in any industry, not just finance,” Clayton continues. “Our competition comes from everywhere. Customers will see new features in apps that aren’t related
to financial services, and they’ll want the same or better new features in their banking app immediately. It’s an exciting and dynamic challenge that sees us constantly improving our services and journeys across the whole bank to include new capabilities that make banking easier for customers.
“It’s worth noting that change is being driven beyond the consumer trends, however,” she continues. “Take the pandemic and the last two years as an example, there were many things in the digital sphere that were accelerated and macro conditions and trends, from new entrants attacking various parts of the value chain and increasing technological integration into everyday lives, through to sudden loss of income driven by unemployment and furlough and macro economic conditions impacting customer credit profiles. It all factored into where we focused our strategies, not only for customers, but for our colleagues too.”
The challenge of navigating an increasingly complex and competitive transformation environment requires a balance between keeping pace with agile delivery while remediating legacy infrastructure. To do so, organisations should reconsider their perspective on transformation to one that sees technologies, people, culture and organisational structures evolved in a sustainable and holistic way. For
Redshaw and Clayton, this requires a more deliberate, proactive, strategic and integrated approach to digital technology and transformation which, in turn, necessitates the evolution of traditional organisational structures and the emergence of the CDIO role.
Structure – with its dual reporting lines that reflect an attempt to blend functional and divisional alignment with regional and/or product autonomy – retained by many large organisations is problematic in the context of digital transformation. “It muddies the waters of prioritisation and investment through centralised matrix hierarchies with decentralised product and IT delivery teams,” says Clayton. “This creates competing agendas and messaging, leaving teams to decode ambiguous strategic ambitions, balance the IT demand of ‘the new digital’ with the ‘old legacy’ and fight it out for resources. Inevitably, that means it falls short of ever delivering significant groundbreaking new innovation or achieving giant leaps forward. Rather, it maintains the status quo. You could argue that the overly complex nature of the matrix structure is what’s contributed to the reputation that established organisations can only offer ‘dinosaurlike’ delivery when compared with their more nimble startup counterparts, particularly in the financial sector.”
Bi-modal IT, in which an organisation’s IT team is structured into two distinct groups –
NatWest Group provides financial services and financial capabilities to its more than 19 million customers, helping individuals, families, businesses, and the communities they serve, to champion potential and thrive. As a part of NatWest’s strategy to help customers build financial capability, NatWest, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) came together to ideate and launch Housemate, an app that is designed to simplify the shared living experience, help people in rented accommodation manage shared bills, build their credit score, and build tenancy trust.
Housemate’s innovative approach, which leverages Open Banking and microservices infrastructure hosted in Cloud, provides features like Bill tracking, where co-tenants can track who owes whom money, repay instantly and credit building for private renters. Housemate sends the rent payment information to Experian, thereby enabling private renters to build their credit files and creating significant opportunities for access to financial products at the best rates.
As one of NatWest’s growth and transformation partners, TCS leveraged its contextual knowledge and together with the business stakeholders implemented a Cloud-First Strategy to meet the bank’s strategic vision to support the financial well-being of its customer.
We are proud to be partners with the ideation, development, and the launch of the Housemate app. Our teams worked closely with NatWest business to bring an innovative mindset to co-create a product which not only makes splitting expenses easy but also empowers customers to take charge of their finances. Special thanks to Wendy Redshaw (CDIO, NatWest Retail Digitech) and the Retail Digitech Leadership Team for supporting us through this belief journey.”
Ravikiran Parasuraman Client Partner, Tata Consultancy ServicesContact Visit www.tcs.com or email bfs.kyp@tcs.com
Mode 1, which typically focuses on traditional IT-centric type change and slower paced transformation, and Mode 2, which delivers fast-paced business and customer-centric IT delivery – is an improvement. However, both Redshaw and Clayton argue it is still an untenable model through which to fully embrace the scale and pace of digital transformation necessary to remain competitive. Particularly as the division into two distinct branches and the labels that come with the bi-modal approach (slow/fast, legacy/digital and so on) continue to create divisions in organisational mindset, culture and perceived value.
There are other serious implications that Clayton and Redshaw highlight in their paper, including potential gaps in learning, career progression and skills development, breakdown of communications, a lack of cohesion and collaboration and, ultimately, conscious and subconscious tribalisation and biases that interfere with productivity, performance and innovation. Once established, and if not tackled at least culturally, if not organisationally, this gap between two distinct tribes of IT can grow wider and inevitably limits the organisation’s overall ability to accelerate innovation strategically beyond three to five years.
In order to do so, transformational fluidity is necessary, say Redshaw and Clayton. In this scenario, culture and capability across the organisation is prioritised ahead of modernity of IT systems or the structure
of customer proposition work. Traditional ways of structuring a business – hierarchy and function – are flattened in order to encourage autonomy and pathological collaboration across network-based constructs, and technology and digital are for everyone rather than siloed in categories like ‘just business’ or ‘just IT’.
“It’s a significant change that requires a reshaping of transformation culture, not just within the organisation but also across the wider ecosystem and in partnership with strategic partners, vendors and suppliers throughout the supply chain,” says Clayton. “Examples of where this works effectively can be found in our
“As CDIO I’m able to help the business and its people thrive, while doing my job in a way that’s authentically me”
—
WENDY REDSHAW
strategic partnerships with organisations such as HCL, Accenture, Infosys, Wipro and TCS, all of whom share our vision of purpose and ambition to evolve and grow our technology, people, processes and business, building a relationship bank for digital world. It changes the question from one of how does a business transform to become digital, to how does it fundamentally and strategically shift so that innovation and transformation is a continuous, amorphous and fluid core value for the future digital age and beyond.
is that of a tree. The organisation is the tree; while we don’t always see the underlying processes – everyday photosynthesis is happening, sap, water and nutrients are changing based on external market conditions, there’s seasonality and ongoing change – the tree, like the organisation, is in a constant state of transformation. The moral to this is that transformation and the transformation culture can’t be managed by a Gantt chart, they’re in a fluid, semi-permanent state. True leadership and transformation is strategic and continuous.”
A different type of leader is necessary to realise this approach and thus execute on any significant transformation. The unique challenges present both today and in the future require a leader who eschews the traditional and ‘old-school’ approaches and understands that the ‘how’ is as important as the ‘what’, is able to turn multiple dials across the organisation while also fostering and choreographing a collective sense of purpose that brings people together, helps them flourish, and nurtures the next generation through thought-leadership and role modelling.
Redshaw, Clayton and the CDIO role at NatWest Group embody this way of thinking to great effect.
“Transformation is often seen as a destination as opposed to a way of living and being,” she affirms. “My favourite analogy for this
“Considering the role pre-pandemic, I would have pointed to it emerging in response to the challenges that organisations, particularly those in the financial sector, face with building the digital
future of tomorrow whilst trying to rebuild and architect the underlying IT infrastructure,” says Redshaw. “There’s a number of challengers who, while also having the advantage of being regulated slightly differently to a bank like NatWest, are starting from a position of having digital technologies readily accessible, cloud deployment and microservices from the get go, without the legacy of technical debt. With almost 300 years’ history we’ve had to continuously evolve and, while we have the latest and greatest technologies to serve our customers, if we were to start over again from a blank sheet of paper, it would probably look very different. With that in mind, a leader who can rally, inspire, innovate and who is also authentic and genuine across a plethora of disciplines is needed.
“Post-pandemic, a CDIO-shaped leader is needed even more,” she continues. “We’ve seen an unprecedented shift in digital technologies, a sweeping wave of resourcing constraints globally as the demand for digital and technological skills has sky-rocketed, and differentiation in organisations won’t necessarily be wholly related to compensation, but more about its value, purpose and leaders.”
Value and purpose shape transformation at NatWest. The bank champions potential, helping the 19 million people, families and businesses it serves in communities throughout the UK and Ireland to rebuild and thrive. One of the most
significant successes to date of the CDIOs at the organisation has been, as part of The Guardians network, embedding collaboration, connectedness and this purpose across those employees who were previously business-side digital and technology, bringing the two areas together to ensure every action and delivery has purpose in mind.
Prior to the 2020 creation of the CDIO, says Redshaw, digital was based solely in the business at NatWest. “This can risk not looking at the whole system which delivers for the customer, and treating digital and innovation as something done only by FinTechs, or only by doing work outside of the main bank in a spin off. Many traditional organisations have this attitude, and it misses the value of in-house grown and built innovation, together with the internal skills and talent that can enable change from within and at scale. To be nimble the whole organisation needs to move nimbly – like a shoal of fish moving as one – so information and purpose needs to be shared. The only ‘tribe’ should be the One Bank tribe, working as one to help our customers to thrive. Such change is never easy, and a key challenge has been facilitating the cultural mindset shift that understands this value. For leaders, the shift to CDIO requires several new skills and capabilities in order to succeed.
“It needs unique, innovative and forward thinking methods,” she enthuses. “The
CDIO is an individual with multi-faceted backgrounds in both traditional and startup style technologies; someone with a deep knowledge of data and of digital and business, together with the value of customer-centricity; they must also have the ability to harness the power of collaboration and lose any ego so as to not fear losing control or power. Underpinning those capabilities is a servant leader who appreciates and can apply behavioural psychology, and who is an expert in network influencing and choreographing multiple ecosystems within the organisation. The CDIO should be someone that
chooses to bring people together and helps them to flourish, who can sit comfortably at the centre of a Venn diagram of intelligence, emotional capability and adaptability, and who holds an open, creative and curious mindset.”
NatWest is still relatively new as a CDIO organisation, but the evolution within the business has already brought significant benefits. COVID in particular proved a good litmus test for a role that Redshaw says was still in its storming, forming and norming phases.
“Transformation is often seen as a destination as opposed to a way of living and being”
—
KARI-ANNE CLAYTON
“Covid triggered an alien invasion response, and where the new collaboration paths formed in the face of a common purpose were forged, there was an enthusiasm and helping spirit, and constructs that had previous been in place reminiscent of a command and control governance were abolished in favour of agile-like behaviours – everyone had a seat at the table to solve the greatest challenge we have collectively faced in our lifetimes,”
she explains. “Having the skill sets to seamlessly speak the many languages across the organisation, from value, customer outcome, net promoter scoring and technology, to automation, robotics and data, and still maintain the empathy and resiliency needed to lead people who were dealing with their own feelings of uncertainty and unsettledness was critical, and it was through these CDIO-esque skill sets that we were able to achieve so much.”
Elsewhere, the CDIO has implemented greater agile and agility capabilities, across several areas; a multi-modal IT approach for the delivery of mobile banking applications and, during COVID, the creation and deployment of robots on a large scale and within 72 hours to manage close to quarter of a million mortgage holiday requests; collaboration and reusability; and the ability for teams to scale to meet demand and strategically pivot in
response to rapidly changing conditions. The latter is evidenced in the accelerated roll out and launch of NatWest’s video banking capability that, at the height of the pandemic, was facilitating more than 15,000 appointments per week.
There remains much work to be done to continue to develop the CDIO journey at NatWest particularly, say Redshaw and Clayton, as those in the role leverage network-style organisational structures, promote emergent rather than pre-defined solutions and continue to influence and create the sustainable digital world of tomorrow with today’s technologies. The CDIO is not a standalone solution to the complexities of digital transformation, but one that both believe organisations should implement to gain competitive advantage when navigating tomorrow’s world.
Consumers are more digitally savvy, more connected and –courtesy of companies such as Amazon, Google and others –have an insatiable appetite for friction-free, high-calibre and seamless customer experiences
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The Mission Backpack is quite the accessory. Want to take time out of the office? No problem. Sease’s Solaro Sunrise fabric, which blends sustainable wool and biobased nylon, is entirely waterproof. Want to stay in touch while offgrid? You can do that too, thanks to the 7.5W charge solar panel and internal 5.0 USB controller that powers your devices while on the move. Sease creates in an ethical and sustainable way, driving sustainability across its supply chain, making products locally to reduce emissions, and using natural fibers and bio-based polymers.
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Personal space is important. So too, says MZPA, is bringing a creative approach to your boundaries, whether you’re in the office or at home. Enter The Planet, a beehivelike chair crafted from high-quality plywood and coated with a layer of protective oil-wax. Granted, it’s a rather fancy office chair, but there’s purpose behind the aesthetic.
MZPA says The Planet is a personal relaxation zone that can pass for a home office, give space to focus and concentrate, bring calm and comfort to the work environment, or be used for co-working if assembled en masse.
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GPS, 4G, wifi, heart rate monitors, apps – things that, on one hand make your smartwatch such an indispensable piece of kit and, on the other, have you constantly checking your battery, particularly if you’re on the move. That’s where Garmin’s f nix 6 Solar Series comes into its own. Featuring a Power Glass solar charging lens and customisable power modes, it can get up to 14 days’ battery life. And, in typical Garmin style, it comes with more features than you’ll ever need, from music and payments to sports apps, ski maps and more.
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Working from home, complete with endless video calls and online meetings, can become repetitive. Aside from changing your background, what else can you do? You can beam a hologram of yourself right into your colleague’s room, that’s what. PROTO M is the world’s first tabletop holoportation device that’s cloud compatible, capable of live streaming or playing scheduled content and giving easy accessibility to volumetric communication. Its AI smart camera and high-density multitouch holographic display let you stream you anywhere you want from your mobile device. Now that’s that remote working with a difference.
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When it comes to smart glasses, there are many options out there. But Nimo, an innovative new design that comes from Nimo Planet, is different. That’s because, rather than give you connectivity to your favourite apps, let you play music or take photos, Nimo wants to replace your work computer or laptop and act as a mini, head-mounted computer for remote working. Each lens of the smart specs –which can connect to a lightweight Bluetooth keyboard and mouse – will serve up to six virtual screens and support thousands of producivity and work apps.
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Us humans, we aren’t perfect. Particularly when it comes to our memories. Did you know, for example, that we forget around 80% of the information we experience every day, limiting our imagination and our ingenuity?
Consider, then, the possibilities if you had your own personal AI, a unique technology for you that automatically saves, organises and manages your memories
while creating a personal model based on those unique memories and experiences. Suman Kanuganti, together with cofounders Sharon Zhang, Kristie Kaiser and Marc Ettlinger, has created just that with Personal.AI, the innovative startup business that’s building an AI extension of human memory that lets you capture every memory seamlessly, recall it by typing the beginning of the thought and inspire your own creativity.
Kanuganti is an experienced and renowned entrepreneur, creator and tech lover responsible for seven patents, recognised as one of Smithsonian’s Top Innovators, a distinguished leader by UCSD Rady School of Management and as one of SDBJ’s 40 under 40.
www.personal.ai
“You don’t solve the human, you solve the problem”
KENEILWE GWABENI DISCUSSES WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY, LEADING BY EXAMPLE AND INSPIRING THE NEXT GENERATION FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
It’s amazing how one moment, one conversation or phone call can change the path we take and, ultimately, the influence we’ll have on others. Take Keneilwe Gwabeni as a perfect example. She is, at face value, a vastly experienced and well respected technology leader and the current Chief Information Officer at South Africa’s Telkom Business and Trudon.
But scratch the surface and you also find a caring and compassionate leader, someone whose career has been driven by a desire to nurture, help and drive others forward – and to champion women and underrepresented communities to follow in her footsteps and achieve the same success she has. Behind that success is a message that her mother gave on one well-remembered phone call early in her life, and which has stayed with her throughout her career since: ‘believe in yourself and your abilities, ignore everything else and focus on your work. Never let people change who you are and don’t give your power away to them’.
That Gwabeni has excelled in everything she’s undertaken since owes a lot to that conversation with her mother, which resulted from her experiences with corporate inequality while embarking on a life in technology. Indeed, whether it’s in her views on leadership and the importance of inspiring others, on her opinions on her duty to create opportunities for young women, or the important and transformational she leads at Telkom, which centres around helping transform the working environment for South African SMMEs and entrepreneurs, people and a sense of true purpose are imbued in all Gwabeni’s work. But first, that phone call.
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Gwabeni was bitten by the technology bug at Cape Peninsula University of Technology as a Computer Technician – the same university at which she studied, receiving a Bachelor of Technology Degree in Information Technology. She later furthered her studies at Africa’s top ranking University of Cape Town (UCT), where she obtained BCom Honours in Information Systems. In 2001, she landed the opportunity to work for one of South Africa’s largest enterprises. “It was my first encounter with corporate inequality,” she recalls. “Despite having the
relevant qualifications and experience, many people believed that I didn’t belong because I looked different,” she continues. “And that mindset wasn’t just in IT, but was widespread across other business units in the organisation. There were instances where I was told to my face that I was an affirmative action candidate, affirmative action being an initiative introduced by the government to ensure that qualified people who were previously disadvantaged –women, black people, people with disabilities and so on, are given equal opportunities in the workplace.
“MY MOTHER’S WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT AND THE LEARNINGS I TOOK FROM THAT FIRST ROLE HAVE ALWAYS SPURRED ME ON”
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“In one of my early jobs, my boss called me into his office and told me that employees in another business unit didn’t want me to work on their computers,” she adds. “I’d done nothing wrong, they just didn’t want a person who looked like me doing the job. I was frustrated, didn’t know what to do and was on the verge of giving up. That was when I called my mother, crying in the bathroom at work and told her I just didn’t know what to do. It’s worth bearing in mind that she was unemployed and had no experience in a corporate environment, but she gave that advice and those words have carried me through my whole life.”
Reinvigorated, Gwabeni set about putting her mother’s words into action, a practice that hasn’t stopped since. She explains: “I focused on delivering my best result at work, I excelled and went above and beyond my role and responsibilities to prove my worth. It’s worth noting that I worked ten times more than others, and not to be seen as a high performer or key talent, but just to be seen as a ‘normal’ employee. Later, those same people that had said they didn’t want me working on their computers began asking me for help. As I’ve progressed through my career, I’ve continued to make my mark in every organisation I’ve worked in – those
unpleasant experiences in my early years have made me stronger and more resilient and, if I ever experienced anything similar, my mother’s words of encouragement and the learnings I took from that first role have always spurred me on.”
Those lessons have driven her to be a vocal and active advocate for cultural change and greater diversity and inclusion in the workplace, subjects, she says, that are improving in her native South Africa. “Though similar to other corporates globally, the inequality landscape in South Africa goes beyond gender and includes race, which still has a lot of
Gwabeni has done so with great passion and drive throughout her career to date, including most recently at Telkom. She has 22 years’ experience in the IT field, with 16 of those in leadership roles across a range of industries such as energy, academic, regulatory and financial, and banking. These different environments, she states, have brought a broad scope of experiences and skills to her leadership philosophy. “That’s from both a business and technology perspective,” adds Gwabeni. “It enabled me to become a seasoned strategist with in-depth experience in strategy definition
historical sentiment from the apartheid era. As a result, as a woman of colour, one has to understand how to manoeuvre both gender and race inequality in the workplace. A lot has been done on both, through programmes and conversations around gender inequality and female empowerment, and there’s some visible changes in the right direction in terms of addressing issues around women in top leadership roles, as is the case globally. However, there’s still a long way to go to see impactful change, which is why we have to continue to raise the issue and make businesses address the challenges with real purpose.”
“AS A LEADER I HAVE TO BE THE CHANGE I’M ASKING FOR FROM OTHERS”
and execution, complex IT operations management, and corporate and IT governance development and implementation for both the private and public sectors. The leadership roles I’ve held in these different environments involved IT service delivery and management, and key stakeholder management in multiple African and international countries.
“More than anything else, though, leadership for me is about leading by example,” she continues. “Culture in any business is people, and for the culture to change people must change. As a leader I have to be the change I’m asking for from others. That means I have to create opportunities for women and I should mentor and coach young female leaders. Women struggle with
“AS A WOMAN OF COLOUR, ONE HAS TO UNDERSTAND HOW TO MANOEUVRE BOTH GENDER AND RACE INEQUALITY IN THE WORKPLACE”
work-life balance and, as a female leader, my role is to help them find that balance. In African culture, it is still a commonly held belief that women should be domesticated, go home and be mothers and wives, and do specific duties for her family and husband, regardless of her career. With that in mind, being a leader for me is about creating a conducive environment that enables women to grow and thrive in their careers, while also being able to look after their children and families.”
Tech has a gender problem. That’s as true in any country as it is South Africa, as Gwabeni has experienced first hand in her early career. As well as the important work she does
in mentoring and coaching both young women and female leaders, she is a passionate believer in the importance of education and encouraging greater diversity among young people in STEM subjects. “The earlier generation of women in technology had to go through the same experiences I did and not give up, so that women could gain more recognition across the industry,” Gwabeni reflects. “If I would have given up because of unfair treatment I would have not done justice to the future generations, and would have proved the incorrect and negative narrative that women don’t belong in STEM correct. I’m one of the many women who are living testimony that we not only belong in STEM, but can truly excel and achieve much more than our male counterparts. Every girl in the world should know that they have what it takes and can be whatever they want to be.”
Much work has been done to encourage and drive gender equality in STEM, says Gwabeni, reflecting on progress made to date. But, she adds, statistics still demonstrate a significant gap that requires continued focus in order to improve. Crucial to this is a focus on driving the adoption of STEM subjects among young girls and women, which Gwabeni says will serve to create a critical foundation for maintaining the current flow and future growth of women in technology.
“Nothing we are fighting for will be possible without education,” she affirms. “It is key to success, and I believe it’s the responsibility
of women who have been successful in the field to share their stories, coach and mentor upcoming women so that they can learn and become better. Education provided me with the vital knowledge that allowed me to participate in intellectual dialogue and gain respect from both my peers and top leaders in the industry. Without it I wouldn’t be where I am today. There’s still a strong perception that STEM subjects and related work are difficult and for only the most intellectual. That’s why it’s also important for women like me who hold leadership positions in technology to simplify the concepts and make it less intimidating to young people. They all have what it takes to be successful.”
“MY ULTIMATE GOAL IS TO SEE A SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT IN EFFORTS TO BRIDGE THE DIGITAL GAP IN RURAL COMMUNITIES”
Technology is Gwabeni’s other passion. At Telkom she has held the role of CIO since late 2019, a position in which she is accountable for the end-to-end IT strategy and operations of the business and spearheading the company’s digital transformation journey from a technology perspective. The latter includes the development and implementation of core digital platforms, including the Telkom Business eCommerce digital platform and the YEP Digital Marketplace, both of which are designed to help South African SMMEs to grow their businesses and thrive in the market. Unsurprisingly, given her passion for people and making a difference, these kinds of solutions have better opportunities for individuals at their heart.
“Our mandate is to help transform South African SMMEs to grow their businesses so they are profitable and sustainable,” Gwabeni explains. “Within that, my role is to ensure that we fulfil this mandate through technology and providing affordable digital solutions that enable these businesses to participate in the digital space. It’s really important that large corporations like ours contribute to addressing the challenges of affordability and access for SMMEs, specifically in low income and rural communities. Many have to travel long distances to sell their products and services in towns, most have to carry their own products, equipment and materials, and there’s also little access to educational resources. But, if provided
with the necessary resources, a lot of these businesses will have multiple options to generate income through the use of technology and digital solutions.
“With that in mind, our YEP platform is geared towards building an ecosystem for the SMMEs to buy and sell products and services from each other and their customers in a B2B2C model,” adds Gwabeni.
“In the near future we’ll also add a bidding functionality, where large corporations can advertise tenders for jobs that the SMMEs can bid for directly, which will help them build out their business networks and partnerships. From a technology perspective, it was important that these solutions were designed for ease of use, accessibility and affordability for our customers, which meant I had to pay close attention to the
technology and architecture used. They also address the key issue of inclusivity for low income communities, ensuring our customers don’t need to invest in expensive technology to enable across. Rather, they were built to be compatible with multiple desktop and mobile devices and were zero rated for Telkom customers.”
“EVERY GIRL IN THE WORLD SHOULD KNOW THAT THEY HAVE WHAT IT TAKES AND CAN BE WHATEVER THEY WANT TO BE”
It is such drive and focus on people, their needs and safeguarding their futures that has brought such success to both Gwabeni and Telkom. It is, for example, little surprise that she is a two-time winner of the Global CIO 100 award in 2021 and 2022. And, with her mothers’ words still driving her passion for her subject matter, she intends to continue making a difference. “I’ve made it my mission to prove the stereotype that women are not suitable for technology leadership roles wrong,” she says. “I try to lead by example to inspire, and to make sure that the next generation can connect with technology rather than be intimidated by it.
“My ultimate goal is to see a significant improvement in efforts to bridge the digital gap in rural communities,” she concludes. “As the world progresses in the digital era, we mustn’t leave those communities behind, which is why I’ll continue to focus on providing affordable and easy to use solutions to our customers so they can participate in that future. Ultimately, it’s all about giving people hope and the belief that they are worthy and have what it takes to achieve great things in life.”
www.telkom.co.za
CORSIGHT AI CEO ROB WATTS DISCUSSES
THE GROWTH OF SYNTHETIC DATA AND ITS USE IN FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY
According to Gartner, in just two years, around 60% of the data that’s being used to develop AI and analytics projects will be synthetically generated. The technology will have a large number of uses across several areas, including facial recognition technology, where facial analysis algorithms are being trained using synthetic data. To discuss the growth of synth data, its advantages compared to ‘real-life’ datasets and potential challenges, we spoke with Rob Watts, CEO of facial recognition provider Corsight AI. Here’s what happened…
Tech-Exec: Can you give us a brief introduction to Corsight and its activities and tell me more about your work and your experience in data and technology?
Rob Watts: Corsight AI is a leading facial recognition (FR) technology provider dedicated to creating a game-changing solution that is unrivalled within the industry. While there are plenty of FR providers in the market, our mission is to be the most accurate, ethical, privacy-focused and fast performing. We aim to demonstrate exactly how this technology can be used as a genuine force for good within society. Already our core Corsight product – Fortify – allows the recognition of faces in extreme angles, moving crowds or with low-quality images. Fortify can also detect faces with masks on and in low light, with high accuracy rates at 2 lumens (nearly complete darkness).
I joined Corsight as CEO after a number of years working closely with police, government and security services, leveraging data for intelligence purposes. My career in the technology industry before that was certainly varied; I started in engineering, working with computer-aided design systems, before moving into distribution and using data to optimise delivery logistics. Ultimately, the common theme across my entire career, including my work with Corsight AI, has been a focus on not only engaging with people around data and technology, but also prioritising the business outcomes and that they both can deliver.
TE: How has the adoption and use of data evolved for organisations over your career and what are the key trends or drivers increasing or influencing the shift towards synthetic data?
RW: Over the last 20 years, the value of data has grown exponentially, and it’s now one of the most valuable resources an organisation can harness. Yet there is still a critical data gap spanning many industries. Deep learning models are very data-hungry; even when a million samples are provided to train a model, 10 million would be better, and 100 million would be even better again.
Every data scientist knows how integral getting clean, usable data is for their job, and it is a very resource consuming process. For example, huge efforts have been made to collect datasets in the automotive industry in the development of self-driving vehicles.
In other industries, like in healthcare with medical diagnoses, collecting data is extremely challenging due to privacy and data ownership concerns and there is difficulty enforcing this privacy while efficiently utilising the data.
Training models supported with synthetic data could revolutionise the way we overcome various data and AI challenges. Synthetic data can be introduced to realworld datasets in order to ‘fill the gaps’ – counteracting the shortfalls and reducing the risk of bias in algorithms. This offers a simple solution for tackling the issue of feeding the data-hungry model, by making niche and specialist training data more abundant. Another benefit is that it also relieves the research teams from the intensive tasks of accurately tagging the dataset, as ground truth labels are readily available.
TE: What about facial recognition more specifically, what does the data landscape look like in your sector and how do you source, analyse and use data to innovate?
RW: Nowadays, we’re seeing significant development in the field of human faces synthetic data, owing to breakthroughs in the research of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). It’s now possible to generate faces of people who never existed in the real world, in a way that a human cannot tell if the face belongs to a real person or was created by a machine.
“
Synthetic data is any data created through the manipulation and implementation of computer algorithms”
Synthetic faces can be modified for many attributes such as age, expression, facial hair and more, empowering face-related AI algorithms to extend their reach. However, it is yet to be demonstrated whether synthetic data can reliably generate identities and manipulate them in a way that accurately mimics the real world, and on which facial recognition models can rely on. Based on what we’ve seen, we are optimistic about this happening soon.
TE: Can you define synthetic data and discuss in more detail the three main categories for facial recognition?
RW: In short, synthetic data is any data created through the manipulation and implementation of computer algorithms. This is in comparison to real data, or ‘nonsynthetic data’, that has been generated by real-world events. There are roughly three categories of synthetic data specific for facial recognition technology:
1. The augmentation of real-world data, where images of a real individual can be varied to modify features such as age, pose, expression, hairstyle and masks. This could be helpful for example to train models to detect missing people based on childhood images.
2. Generation of faces of people that do not exist using GANs. They are a form of a deeplearning-based generative model used for Unsupervised Learning and comprised of two neural networks competing with each other to generate variations in the data and the other network attempting to discriminate between real and fake data. GANs can create highly realistic images of people that do not exist from people that do, i.e., from a training data set.
3. Computer-generated 3D morphable models of faces. This is similar to the CGI images seen in the cinema.
The ‘revolution’ in GANS in terms of accuracy and realism has only happened in the last couple of years. The same can be said for 3D morphed faces, which have recently become a realistic solution to training datasets for facial recognition. Both will be crucial moving forwards to allowing more data privacy. Yet it is important not to ignore the risks. It is yet to be proven that synthetic data can reliably generate many unique identities that are truly separate, rather than simply a linear mixture of features. There is also a risk of a generalisation of identities, meaning that if the GAN sees only a few faces from a certain demographic it is unknown whether it could generate identities that truly capture the variety of facial features from the real world.
TE: What are the main advantages of using synthetic data rather than collating realworld data and how do you remove any bias from the data?
RW: Synthetic data provides a promising opportunity for organisations across various industries to harness a vast volume of data as well as the insights and analytics that go with it. These fake, computer-generated datasets mean that any gaps in information can be bridged and therefore insights become fairer and more accurate.
At Corsight, we are working with various organisations in this field and exploring the use of synthetic data for facial recognition, looking specifically at how accurately it can mimic real-world nuances and separate identities.
For facial recognition technology in particular, synthetic data is key to fighting bias. Bias within facial recognition algorithms is a direct consequence of bias in the training data. FR has been the object of much criticism around bias, particularly given reports that it will more accurately recognise men than women, or certain ethnicities and ages.
This is changing and the industry is progressing, highlighted in research by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). As of April 2020, the best face identification algorithm has an error rate of just 0.08% compared to 4.1% for the leading algorithm in 2014. For Corsight AI specifically, we recently reported cutting bias according to the latest NIST tests – our newly published algorithm demonstrates excess False Positive Rate (FPR) as low as 10% between white and black males, standing out in comparison to the average excess of 130% for the top 30 leading submissions.
Yet, to reduce bias to the lowest possible rate, training algorithms with synthetic data will be integral. With synthetic data, it is possible to generate equally distributed datasets and significantly reduce, or perhaps even wholly mitigate, such biases. What’s more, if an individual understands that algorithms have been trained to eradicate bias, and their biometrics will be analysed fairly and equally, the trust in this technology will undoubtedly increase.
It’s now possible to generate faces of people who never existed in the real world, in a way that a human cannot tell if the face belongs to a real person or was created by a machine ”
TE: How does synthetic data allow organisations to get around issues of privacy and compliance?
RW: The data usage within the world of facial recognition technology has to be centred around privacy. Yet to train algorithms for accurate FR detection, developers unsurprisingly need to utilise many images of faces. This puts the industry in a grey area, e.g., using the faces of real individuals already within the public domain. Privacy is weighted against the need to develop technologies for the benefit of society safety.
The organisations that develop this AIpowered technology need to therefore ensure it is privacy-by-design from start to finish, and they must collect data consensually to train their algorithms. This is why synthetic
data is becoming so important. By creating artificial images of faces that do not belong to anyone, algorithms can be trained to accurately recognise a broader range of biometric signatures, with far less bias, yet no-one’s privacy is at risk in the process.
TE: What potential challenges may organisations face when generating and using synthetic data and how can they mitigate them?
RW: At this point in time, it is yet to be demonstrated that synthetic-face based data sets can be generated to the point that they can replace training sets based on real faces entirely. Whilst 3D generated morphable images can be manipulated to produce various poses under different lighting conditions and with various accessories, there is a
significant challenge with GANS. The training data set for a single model face typically requires several images of the same person in different settings (for example – different age and pose) in order to generate a new face and successfully preserve the identity of that face in new positions/differing lighting/ accessories.
Other potential challenges include capturing the niches of real-world data and the variability of this data, as well as the risk that there may even be biases within the synthetic data itself. As this technology progresses rapidly, we hope to see these challenges overcome. Yet for organisations looking towards synthetic data solutions – and FR technology developers in particular – they must make sure they have ethical frameworks in place around their AI-powered technology to ensure that any bias is identified and mitigated.
Well-trained human operators, and a ‘humanin-the-loop’ strategy that places AI as a useful tool to support human decisions, are an integral part of this framework. At Corsight, we work closely with customers and partners to ensure that anyone implementing FR recognises where bias can exist and how to reduce this risk.
TE: How do you predict the use of synthetic data to grow or increase in the coming years?
critical to training driving algorithms on how to react to every possible scenario on the road. In healthcare, it will help bridge the privacy issue and ensure that the best possible data is gathered and learned from, while patient information stays confidential.
But for FRT, synthetic data will be most integral in fighting bias and making algorithms as ethical as possible. Synthetic data is by no means at the point of being the silver bullet to reducing privacy and bias concerns for the FR industry, but it is certainly a useful tool that developers can and should be embracing to make sure AI is a true force for good.
Rob WattsRob Watts, CEO at Corsight AI, has over 20 years’ experience of business leadership and outcome-focused client engagement in the technology industry. In recent years he has held leadership positions at Northgate Public Services and NEC’s Public Safety business across Europe. He has a real desire to make a difference for Corsight clients and partners and is passionate about leveraging facial recognition as a force for good within society.
www.corsight.ai
RW: Various industries will be embracing this technology moving forward. For the automotive industry and the development of autonomous cars, synthetic data will be
NHS Blood and Transplant’s Dan Jeffery on cybersecurity and data in healthcare, and making a real difference
“We’re the monopoly provider of blood, tissues and organs to UK hospitals. You knock us out or we don’t exist for any period of time and how long do you think elective surgeries could go on for, or A&E would stay open? Not long. And if those two services can’t happen then there’s the very real possibility that the national health service would start to capitulate. It’s such important stuff – people’s lives – and that’s what makes the role so complex, but also exciting and fulfilling.”
When it comes to information security, some things can’t go down. Giving the ability to save and improve lives is one of them, as Dan Jeffery knows only too well. As Chief Information Security Officer & Assistant Director: Data at NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) he and his team are responsible for helping safeguard the NHS, in particular the safe and efficient delivery of blood, tissues and organs, from cyber attackers. Jeffery’s role is broad, covering several areas ranging from cybersecurity and information governance, through data management and organ donor registry. In just under two years he has brought significant change to the service through the ongoing delivery of a cybersecurity strategy that builds on his previous work at NHS Digital.
“It’s a pretty broad scope,” he says, dissecting the key components of his current position, “but that’s what makes it such an interesting job. If I had to categorise myself or describe what inspires me it’d
be simple: I love solving complex, challenging or really important problems, most of which happen to revolve around technology. With that in mind the NHS is the perfect place to work. What you do and what you’re contributing to is close to home, it’s real and it’s a set of problems that can literally impact everyone. It also means I cover a lot of bases at NHSBT.
“I’m accountable for cybersecurity, both operationally for things like security monitoring, threat hunting, intelligence and response, and with regards to information security, which is more your secure-bydesign policy work,” Jeffery explains. “I’m also responsible for information
governance, within which sits GDPR, data processing agreements and records management. On the data side, my scope primarily pivots around data management but we’ve also broadened it to encompass strategic data work too, with the objective of moving away from data as a byproduct of the day job to a much more strategic asset. On top of that, I’m also accountable for the ODR, or organ donor registry, which is a repository of around 32 million registrations for if and how people wish to donate their organs; it’s vast amounts of data. Essentially, the job is about data and systems security, making sure things are maintained, standing up and operational so we can deliver our services.”
It hasn’t always been the health service for Jeffery. A background in law, politics and economics with Arabic set him on a course that, through various roles at the Royal United Services Institute and BAE Systems, naturally and steadily evolved to encompass a greater focus on cybersecurity and technology. Later while working at Accenture, where he helped establish the consultancy firm’s security strategy practice for the UK and Ireland, he was involved in consulting work for NHS Digital, the national information and technology partner for the health and care system, that encompassed digital delivery, operating models and a focus on cybersecurity.
“It’s all about how we understand and deliver on every individual’s healthcare needs, and that’s all driven by big data”
Did you know there have already been 140 cyber-attacks on the US health sector this year alone?
These attacks led to 7,518,917 US citizens’ health records being breached and continue the pattern from last year which saw 562 attacks and 41,660,054 records †. Whether well thought out or opportunistic, threat actors need only one small window of opportunity, one seemingly unimportant weakness, to penetrate an organisation –Government and Health included.
So what can be done? NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is championing a holistic, threat led approach by partnering with BAE Systems Digital Intelligence to carry out a Security Threat and Risk Assessment (STARA™) to assess its exposure to attack.
STARA™ is BAE Systems’ trademarked methodology which evaluates and tests for vulnerabilities across an organisation’s security, not just those a CISO would traditionally focus on. Advanced cyber security protection is not enough; threat actors will simply look for vulnerabilities elsewhere. BAE Systems STARA™ will do the same, providing a complete picture of an organisation’s security, as well as examining the mitigations that can strengthen the security posture.
NHSBT is now partnering with BAE Systems to design, build and implement its security transformation programme. BAE Systems Digital Intelligence is uniquely positioned to support, defend and protect the critical national infrastructure of the UK. STARA™ is tried and tested and has been implemented in multiple UK health organisations and across a variety of Government and private sector organisations. If you would like to learn more, click here:
“This was in 2016,” he says. “It involved analysis, providing assessment, findings and recommendations that we were then asked to spin into a strategy to support Paperless 2020, an initiative aimed at the digitisation of health and social care. Then WannaCry happened – on the day we were going to deliver that strategy. There’s nothing like a burning platform to focus the mind and we knew that, had that not happened, the progress to getting the funding required and the focus needed would have been far slower. Shortly after, someone at the NHS reached out and basically said ‘we’ve got the money, you’ve given us the strategy, do you want to come and deliver it for us?’.
“Opportunities like that don’t come along too often in your career: I knew it was an amazing organisation and that there was great potential because of the strategy work I’d already done, but also because healthcare was one of the few areas that was near enough greenfield at that point in terms of digital and cybersecurity. I had to take it.”
Between 2018 and September 2020 Jeffery drove the delivery of NHS Digital’s £150m cybersecurity programme, riding a renewed sense of purpose around security and privacy across the organisation and a heightened awareness that, to deliver long-term plans, policy initiatives and the best healthcare, harnessing and securing the vast volumes of data at hand
would be essential. “We’re trying to move towards prevention rather than cure and a greater sense of patient centricity,” he explains. “It’s all about how we understand and deliver on every individual’s healthcare needs, and that’s all driven by big data. We have to be seen in both word and deed to be trusted custodians and stewards of peoples’ most intimate and sensitive information, so security needs to be there from the get-go, built into the fabric of the organisation.”
This work, which Jeffery describes as ‘setting the foundational conditions and capabilities across the system’ has both been the catalyst for significant evolution in the health service’s approach to data and cybersecurity, and set the tone for current work at NHSBT. “It’s a constant evolution,” he expands, “the NHS Digital strategy was the starter for 10, the foundational piece within which we did things like enhance the existing security operation centre, pushed out senior information risk owner (SIRO) and board level training, and provided the policies and processes that set
“I love solving complex, challenging or really important problems”
the standard. That allows you to then build on top, refining as you evolve, adopting new technology and solutions to increase security monitoring across the estate so that, should another WannaCry happen, we’re ready to mitigate any impact.
“The whole approach to data strategy and cyber has improved a lot over the last three or four years more broadly,” says Jeffery. “We’ve seen developments like the National Data Guardian, for example, which has really shaped the focus and mindset to data, the development of SIROs who are responsible for all
information risk and the new Data Security Protection Toolkit (DSPT), which is broad in its scope covering governance, technical capabilities, processes and so on and has the objective of continuous improvement across the board. Also, units like NHS Digital and NHS X now have the capability to set up incident response and national alerting capability should there be any critical and widespread vulnerabilities; this creates an environment in which everyone can quickly be made aware of the problem and elicit a response within 48 hours for a resolution in a predetermined time.
“We have to be seen in both word and deed to be trusted custodians and stewards of peoples’ most intimate and sensitive information”
“Importantly, I think there’s enough give in the model at the moment that you don’t have the policies or processes become overbearing on individual organisations within the health service,” he continues. “We have to remember that, while security, cyber and privacy is absolutely 100% a core enabler of digital patient outcomes, the business of trusts and arms length bodies like NHSBT isn’t just security, it’s delivering care and services. From my perspective, it’s about balance and allowing organisations to take risk-based decisions and a pragmatically robust approach to security.”
Jeffery has continued this approach at NHSBT, which he joined in late 2020 during the height of the COVID pandemic. At that point, he concedes, the organisation had a small but capable team focused on cybersecurity and data that had yet to deliver to its full potential. “The delivery strategy was good, but it was pretty much textbook rather than contextualised,” he affirms. “One of the first actions for me was to review that strategy and to shift left on many of the points of focus. We understood the problem spaces, but it was important to identify them in more detail,
draw out some quick wins and build the foundational capability from the outset.
“There’s several aspects of that,” he continues. “Initially, we contracted a National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) accredited response partner because we had few staff and were potentially wide open. Next, we worked to get eyes across the estate including deploying endpoint detection across laptops, desktops and services before working to monitor that data in a contextualised way that was prioritised against the business. To do so we brought in a security incident management platform, through which we could feed data and analyse it against use cases that were then prioritised in alerts. We’ve also built our own security operations centre to make sure we have true security in depth. It was a lot of change that happened very quickly.”
As with any significant transformation programme, culture, mindset and collaboration are as crucial as any technology adoption. This was certainly the case at NHSBT, says Jeffery, explaining the importance of ensuring every one of the 6,000+ people across the organisation understands that security isn’t just a technology problem. He elaborates: “If you gave me a budget and told me I could either spend it on policy, technology or people I’d choose people every time. Ultimately, particularly in the kind of organisation we work in, they’re our most beautiful and greatest asset, but also potentially our greatest vulnerability.
“If you gave me a budget and told me I could either spend it on policy, technology or people I’d choose people every time”
“A clinician’s mindset is patient first, and that’s absolutely right, but what they perhaps haven’t always seen is that some of the steps needed to take from a security perspective are designed entirely to ensure the safety, security and confidentiality of the patient,” adds Jeffery. “Our role has been to educate them in a way that isn’t bits and bytes or threat hunting, or anything else like that, but in a way that they understand. We’ve done so by using the Hippocratic Oath, which centres around doing no harm and maintaining confidentiality of the patient. Looking at that in a contemporary digital context within the delivery of health and care and approaching it as the CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity and availability) has worked well. Confidentiality speaks for itself from a security perspective, while the do no harm aspect relates to availability and integrity – if your systems aren’t available or you can’t trust the data in order to make informed medical decisions, then that’s a problem. Looking at it through this lens has led to an amazing transformation across the organisation in terms of mindset towards security.”
Alongside internal culture change and collaboration, Jeffery cites the importance of working with key strategic technology partners such as MTI and BAE Systems Digital Intelligence systems. Both, he says, have contributed to the work of the last two years by working in close partnership with him and his team to solve many of the complex problems that have needed to be overcome.
Conflict between nations and the pandemic has brought the threat of cyber-attacks on individuals, businesses, and countries into sharp focus. The role of the Chief Information Security Officer is more important than ever before to ensure an organisation’s infrastructure, customers and employees are protected.
Every organisation tries to achieve a robust level of cyber security defence and awareness. Naturally there are struggles implementing a solid cyber security strategy, as all businesses have different levels of technical aptitude, budgets, team size while facing unique threats.
MTI Technology has over 25 years of experience delivering cyber security solutions and services to global industry-leading organisations. Common questions we’ve heard and solved over that time are:
• I know I need to do something but where do I start?
• Where do I get the best and quickest return on investment?
• What are the “quick wins” to demonstrate progress to my board?
• What single solution will address the most risk?
• I don’t want to add extra burden to my small team -how much time will they need to invest?
• How do I get my board to take cyber security seriously and secure funding?
MTI Technology have aligned their cyber security portfolio to each stage of the framework. This ensures our customers have a complete route to a robust and reliable cyber security strategy that enables them to:
• Identify risks within, and facing, your organisation.
• Protect against these risks and cyber-attacks.
• Detect if a cyber-attack is launched against you.
• Respond to that attack.
• Recover from a successful attack.
Our cyber security specialists have written How To Strengthen Your Cyber Resilience to help you create a robust cyber security strategy that’s right for your business.
MTI Technology’s tried and tested technologies have been signposted throughout and are aligned to each stage of the framework. It also includes 50 questions to ask your business to get started, as well as share practical tips on how to strengthen your cyber resilience in an increasingly complex and digital world.
Download your free copy of the guide here.
Cybersecurity never rests. During COVID the threat landscape faced by Jeffery and his colleagues at both NHS Digital and NHSBT continued to diversify and present new risks. At the same time, NHSBT is broadening its scope of services to include plasma delivery and genomics, which involves vast amounts of very sensitive data in the form of individual genome sequences. The organisation is close to half way through the initial cyber strategy Jeffery embarked on when joining. With the key foundations now in place, he says, the focus shifts to empowering the business moving forwards.
them to deliver – it’s effectively a move from DevOps to DevSecOps, which will be really important. Other areas of focus are around the regulatory regime for connected medical devices, supporting the organisation’s secure adoption and pivot to the cloud as we move away from a reliance on on-prem services, and optimising our data analytics capabilities.
“We’ve several product centres that spin out the agile units needed to work to particular directives, whether that’s blood, organs or clinical services,” he states.
“Our job is to ensure that security is never a choke point for our agile delivery. As part of that, we’re looking at how we can empower those teams and give them the tools, training and oversight that allows
“We deal with vast volumes of data – population-scale data sets, and the variety is enormous because we have brand new and bleeding-edge technologies, but also a significant amount of legacy technologies,” says Jeffery. “That means we’ve got paper records, digitised records, structured and unstructured data, and the pace at which it’s coming at us is pretty relentless. As we mature our analytics capabilities, we’ll be working with more external data partners like NHS Digital and NHS England, so there’s a lot of work there around how we manage and store data, as well as the hygiene factors necessary. It’s challenging, but it also really drives you because of the importance of every aspect of the work. The end result is the pride you can take in doing something with your skills that’s meaningful and makes an impact, it will always be the cornerstone of what we do.”
www.nhsbt.nhs.uk
“Our job is to ensure that security is never a choke point for our agile delivery”
THE BIggEST PROBLEM FACINg OUR TRANSITION TO RENEWABLE ENERgY?
FINDINg A zERO-CARBON WAY OF KEEPINg THE LIgHTS ON WHEN THERE'S NO WIND OR IT'S A CLOUDY DAY.
The solution lies in storing excess energy and dispatching it when needed. Or, if you’re Energy Vault, erecting the impressive-looking ‘Resiliency Centers’ within which AI controls an autonomous dance of composite blocks made from low-cost and locally sourced materials. Energy Vault’s gravity-based solutions (GES) orchestrate the charge, storage and discharge of electricity in grid-scale applications in a remarkably simple way.
Gravity storage refers to the use of energy to place objects at height then lower them under natural gravitational force. This movement turns mechanical motors and creates electricity that is dispatched to the grid when needed. When renewable generation exceeds grid demand, the Resiliency Center stacks composite bricks autonomously; when power is needed, they are lowered sequentially, thus generating electricity in a clean and sustainable way.
www.energyvault.com
“ Good connectivity is crucial if we want to deliver effective digital services”
Kurt Frary loves technology and innovation as much as anyone. That’s clear in abundance during our conversation, whether it’s the passionate way he describes visiting local hack spaces to network with other technophiles [including a fondly remembered lesson in soldering circuit boards], his enthusiasm and knowledge for the evolution of both enterprise and consumer technology over his career, or his can-do and straightforward approach to innovation that has reaped significant professional success. When he tells me, towards the end of our chat, that he’s a passionate follower of gamification and owns nearly every VR headset going, it seals the deal.
And all that before an in-depth look at his highly successful career as Deputy Director of Information Management Technology and CTO at Norfolk County Council (NCC).
Frary, a Norfolk native, has been with NCC for more than 18 years, progressing through several IT and tech-focused roles in that time. In his current position he plays a key role in the technology transformation at the council, is responsible for the operational ICT service, spearheads and drives innovation efforts and, most recently, has been the sponsor and leader of the groundbreaking Norfolk & Suffolk Innovation Network, the largest free-to-use public sector IoT network in the UK.
The latter has played a central role in the overarching ambition shared by both NCC and Frary: to be the best connected rural county in the UK and leverage technology to improve the lives and work of businesses and people in Norfolk. It’s a significant scope of work, too, in a county well known for its ‘big skies’ and flat landscapes. The fifth biggest county in the UK, Norfolk covers some 2,070 square miles of largely rural land with a population density of around 400 people per square mile. In such an environment, says Frary, good connectivity is the foundation for everything.
“It’s crucial for making sure the county is a good place to work and live,” he states. “We’re a rural county, we’ve some big urban areas, but we have some very rural locations to serve so good connectivity is crucial if we want to deliver effective digital services. It’s an interesting concept to think about. On the face of it, in the UK there are of course other rural counties and, to a large extent, we all face the same challenges. But from our perspective, it really encourages us to be innovative and think outside the box.
“Practically, that’s demonstrated in several different projects and programmes,” says Frary. “We’re working on a full fibre network across the county; we’ve embraced the Better Broadband for Norfolk programme, a multi-million pound partnership funded by central government and the New Anglia LEP that’s transforming broadband speeds; and we’ve recently started Project Gigabit, a government
scheme for faster broadband for homes and businesses. Then there’s the work we’re doing on the Norfolk & Suffolk Innovation Network, through which the county has embraced new technologies like long range wireless, IoT devices and the greater harnessing and use of data.
“Our approach on all this has been different to other councils,” he adds. “We’ve a ‘just try it’ attitude to innovation, and it’s always driven by the broader ecosystem. It’s all very well adopting new technology, but you have to work with the people in the county to use it. That means our end users, it means businesses and startups, it’s about teaching digital skills in schools and encouraging the next
“It’s all very well adopting new technology, but you have to work with the people in the county to use it”
generation. I call it our digital ecosystem, and it’s something we’re always mindful of when implementing anything new.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly considering the role NCC plays for the county’s citizens, people are at the heart of all technology adoption. Frary explains how humanity’s evolving relationship with digital technologies over the course of his career is influencing enterprise adoption.
“I’ve had 30 years or so in IT and one of the most significant changes I’ve noticed, particularly in recent years, has been the growing adoption of technology consumables – we’ve all got phones, tablets, devices in our homes, and the way we
interact with and use them in our personal lives bleeds into the business world,” he says. “Expectations have changed too, especially after COVID. From our perspective, it’s about making sure that technology is modern, simple to use and gives a great user experience. We’re here as a public authority to help the people of Norfolk and our region, so we have to embrace peoples’ desire to use new technology, and use it to really make a difference.”
An example of this approach is the Norfolk & Suffolk Innovation Network, a joint project between Norfolk and Suffolk County Councils to use LoRaWAN – a low-power, wide area networking protocol designed for wireless connection of IoT devices –to make a positive difference. The project delivers dual county connectivity to support large numbers of IoT sensors that can be used to collate and analyse data for a broad scope of applications, from monitoring road conditions, improving crop yields and tracking shipping containers to counting footfall at events and improving social care.
The project is Frary’s baby, conceived from – initially – his love of extracurricular networking and attending local hack spaces and technology groups. “The Norwich hack space is a great group of people, all passionate about technology and exploring new ideas,” he notes. “On one visit people were telling me about a long range radio network that was developing in Europe and
explaining how useful it would be to have a similar gateway in Norfolk. At that point it was very much about just experimenting – we built some sensors, learned more about the technology and I could see its potential. Ultimately I took a bit of a risk with some of my IT budget, purchased one of the gateways with the view of encouraging people to embrace it and installed it at our NCC headquarters building.
“LoRaWAN allows small pieces of data, so things like counting people or vehicles, monitoring temperatures and so on, to go a very long way,” Frary continues. “It’s very useful for monitoring services across a rural county like ours. For instance, you may have particular issues with transport networks that you want to monitor more closely, or gain better insight into farming activities, analyse emissions from vehicles
or understand the routines of people who receive social care. It’s perfect for many of the things we have to do as a council, and it’s been very successful, including winning various awards. At present we have some 220 gateways out there and our big differentiator – again, coming back to our ecosystem and putting people at the centre – is that anyone can use the network for free. Whether you’re an individual or a business, you simply have to buy a sensor, configure it, follow the user instructions and you’re off.”
In little more than two years, the Innovation Network has amassed an impressive list of successful use cases. One of the first to prove its value used sensors to monitor road temperatures to improve the efficiency of gritting operations in cold or hazardous
conditions. Monitoring sensors were embedded in some of the county’s road surfaces, with the data collected being used to determine whether the area could be gritted fewer times, thus saving materials, fuel and driver time while maintaining safety.
“Some of the applications I’m most passionate about are how the project is helping the social care bill in Norfolk, the cost of which totals around £1m per day,” states Frary. “We’ve run a pilot where we installed sensors in the homes of people who need assisted living so that we and their carers can monitor their activities and movements. By analysing the data we can establish patterns of when they wake, when they’re preparing food or drink and using different areas of the home so that, should that
“It’s about making sure that technology is modern, simple to use and gives a great user experience”
activity suddenly change or stop, we’re able to very quickly react to the fact that there may be a problem. It’s about visibility on three levels: high-level forecasting and predicting when we need to intervene on care services, which is really important; informing carers of a change in activity so they’re able to correctly assess potential problems; and sharing the data with family members or trusted friends so they’re able to provide the correct level of care also.
“We’re also considering other potential use cases at the moment,” he adds. “A big subject for us is tackling air quality and pollution, particularly around schools and drop-off and pick-up times. With that in mind, we’re collaborating with schools to create an offering that lets the children build and configure their own sensors
to install outside schools that will monitor air quality. The aim would be to present this information to parents via a dashboard when they’re at the school, which would encourage them to be more considerate in their actions.”
A key part of the successful rollout of the network has been close collaboration with key strategic technology partners, says Frary, citing consulting, transformation and digital services business Capita as a prime example. “They’re working with us on the air quality for schools project at the moment,” he says, “and have supplied the gateways, the technology that allows the sensors to ‘talk’ to each other, that we’ve used to build the innovation network more broadly.
“LoRaWAN allows small pieces of data, so things like counting people or vehicles, monitoring temperatures and so on, to go a very long way”
“They’ve had a key role in helping us on this journey, and continue to contribute to our work in a really positive way,” Frary continues. “For example, we’ve run a number of technology sessions with schools together with Capita that allow children to learn more about technology and its applications during school holidays. I think it’s a good example of a changing narrative with suppliers in general. We’re seeing many of our relationships move away from just delivering core business objectives towards suppliers really embracing our work in the public sector. Capita didn’t have any obligation to work with us and the schools but they really wanted to, which is great to see.”
Embracing technology is a mindset that Frary believes is important to continued success at NCC. With any public sector innovation programme there are always constraints, typically around cost and expectations. However, he explains, within the council there exists a can-do attitude to adopting new technology. “It’s not always about the massive project or having everything 100% before you dare to go. I’ve found the better approach to be about having a go and understanding that, if you get some things wrong it doesn’t always matter as much as you think. We’re quite unusual in Norfolk when it comes to technology in the public sector, as we’ve a very innovative mindset and senior people who encourage us to try things, whereas
I think many in similar roles don’t always have the same environment.”
This approach proved useful during the initial disruption caused by the COVID pandemic, says Frary. At the time of COVID, NCC was ready to embark on a 12-month rollout of Microsoft Teams, but the sudden shift to home working saw the same rollout completed in an impressive six weeks. Similarly, in response to the new working environment, Frary and team are working on implementing new chatbot and digital systems that will allow
greater automation of key processes and implementing new Oracle software.
Beyond this, he has one eye on several new and emerging technologies that could offer significant potential when used for NCC services. “Automation will continue to be important,” he says, “and there are several of our services that are crying out to be automated further. But there are a few other innovations that I predict will change the way we work. I foresee a time where we’ll rely more on mobile technology, for example, which will mean we don’t need to operate our own network at all. At the same time, I’m closely monitoring developments in high-speed connectivity.
“I think there’s great potential in the growing gamification of services that we’re seeing,” continues Frary. “I can envisage some really interesting applications for that
in some of our council services, particularly when it comes to engaging a younger audience with educational activities, virtual museums and so on. Hand in hand with that is VR, which could offer some incredible opportunities when it coems to social care, training and how we interact with services. There’s so much opportunity out there, and many newer and developing technologies that we just haven’t considered yet. Our job is to understand how it applies to the public sector and really embrace it.”
www.norfolk.gov.uk
“Some of the applications I’m most passionate about are how the project is helping the social care bill in Norfolk”
Meet the world’s first invisible computing device. A tiny, microLED display the size of a grain of sand that sits on your eye and feeds you critical information when you need it.
Mojo Lens is the brainchild of the team of scientists, futurists, technologists and medical experts at Mojo Vision Inc. who – they say – have joined forces to give us ‘superpowers’. They come courtesy of the incredible, augmented reality smart contact lens, a revolutionary design that includes smart sensors, solid-state batteries and the ability to correct vision.
As well as making you see clearly, Mojo Lens provides you with crucial information when you’re engaged in events that demand attention – think of it as your own Fitbit, smart watch or wearable device in your eye. Its smart software understand the athletic, business and leisure activities you’re doing and displays stats, figures and info via a heads-up, eyeborne display that doesn’t disrupt your ability to see. Now that’s smart.
www.mojo.vision
“ W E WANT THE TECHNOLOGY AND THE USER EXPERIENCE TO b E SOMETHING THAT DOESN ’ T DISTRACT FROM WHO YOU ARE ”
— Mike Wiemer, CTO and co-founder
Look beyond the data. Not, we concede, the introduction you might expect from an in-depth look at leadership and building an effective and meaningful data strategy that’s relevant to businesses in the digital environment. But that doesn’t matter, because it’s a lesson of vital importance for all leaders, executives and organisations looking to navigate change in an increasingly complex and fast-moving world, embrace the true potential of data as a digital enabler, and understand its importance and influence on every business decision and expected outcome.
It’s a lesson that Barry Green wrote the book on. Literally. Green is a seasoned Chief Data Officer, with a broad business background that includes stints as CDO at HSBC and Bank of Ireland in the last five years and, more recently, as a consultant and digital enterprise architect at DSM. This has given him unique insight into the intricacies of the data profession and the complexities of the CDO role, but also an ability to understand business strategy and objectives – a trait he considers essential for developing an effective data strategy that’s complementary to the goals of an organisation, thus maximising value and opportunities.
AS A BUSINESS ENABLER, WHY PEOPLE, CULTURE AND PROCESS ARE AT THE HEART OF ANY EFFECTIVE DATA STRATEGY AND THE MODERN CDO
Green is a vocal advocate for changing the way we think about data. He specialises in creating momentum for change around the topic in both small and large organisations and in Data Means Business, a modern-day bible for any leader in the midst of data-driven change that he co-authored, he sets out how using data to guide decision making builds stronger businesses. This includes explaining why creating change momentum and the right narrative around data are essential, the importance of thinking like a startup, and why culture, people and mindset are the most valuable assets in the leader’s toolbox.
They’re lessons that he has honed over the course of his career: “I think of myself as a business guy that knows technology, not a technology guy,” he says. “Early in my career I was involved in many reengineering and change projects and, often, was told things that just didn’t make sense. I learned the technology side so I could speak the language of the IT teams – it was important for me to get to a point where I could understand it well
“PEOPLE TALK ABOUT DATA AS AN ASSET OR DATA-DRIVEN DECISION MAKING WITHOUT REALLY WANTING TO FULLY UNDERSTAND THE LEVEL OF WORK AND CHANGE THAT’S REQUIRED TO IMPLEMENT IT EFFECTIVELY”
enough to be able to question or challenge what was happening. As a CDO I’ve worked on large-scale, global technology programmes but the basis for my understanding of data has always been about the business: are stakeholders able to make the right decisions, are people getting the reporting or correct information they need to guide effective decision making? It’s how I got into my career in data –I needed to solve problems for myself and the wider business.”
The use of data in the enterprise has increased exponentially in recent years, says Green, and yet there remains a lack of clarity on the core components of building and delivering an effective data strategy. “There’s still a lot of noise around the subject,” says Green. “People talk about data as an asset or data-driven decision making without really wanting to fully understand the level of work and change that’s required to implement it effectively. I’ll give you an example: people say ‘we want to be a datadriven company’, and my response is that, in reality, data doesn’t really drive anything. It doesn’t matter how much information you give people, they can still make bad decisions, which is why when it comes to data implementation the thinking around culture and people is absolutely essential.
“Yes, you have to have people in the business who can make good decisions based on data, but it’s equally important that they feel comfortable challenging the data they’re being given,” he continues. “Data doesn’t just transform your business alone. Leaders have to build a culture where everyone can analyse the data, know where the information comes from to build the statistics and also know when it doesn’t make sense; using data isn’t just about accepting whatever information you’re given, and that’s a cultural change that’s required. I don’t believe that people have fully embraced the level of change required, and that’s because it’s difficult. There can be a lot of excitement around data, but it has to go deeper than that, it needs to be absolutely integrated into the fabric of the business and be a tool that everyone understands and can use to do their job.”
Cultural change is challenging in any organisation. But, in the rapidly evolving digital environment that all businesses exist in, embedding a pragmatic and data-guided culture that sees leaders think in an agile and flexible way, educate and inspire, and build the narrative around the transformative power of data is crucial. Green uses the analogy of business as an ecosystem. Given the increasing understanding that data is a fundamental part of an organisation, he says, it’s essential to change how we think about it not just within the organisation itself, but in the wider business, economic and social environment. To become a data organisation, it is important to move
away from considering data as a special, separate or siloed part of the business. Rather, says Green, it should be used to connect the organisation.
“One of the first points to cultural change is having a handful of senior executives in the organisation at least broadly understanding this point,” he adds. “I’ve seen instances where you have a senior stakeholder driving data strategy but there’s no one else on board; the CDO has to build that momentum of engagement and having multiple people interested. Similarly, simplicity is the key. It’s about using simple language around data implementation to influence the collective mindset within the
“USING DATA ISN’T JUST ABOUT ACCEPTING WHATEVER INFORMATION YOU’RE GIVEN, AND THAT’S A CULTURAL CHANGE THAT’S REQUIRED”
business and make sure everyone understands the value of what you’re doing in a business context. In reality, the technical aspect is relatively easy. It’s about finding the value of that information – you can build me thousands of data lineage diagrams but, unless they’re being used to create real tangible value in the organisation, why are you doing it and how should I use it? They’re not always the questions people are asking.”
The role of the CDO continues to evolve in line with increasing data use and adoption. In order to lead successful, data-driven change, the CDO should have a strategic and businessfocused mindset, says Green. “That’s always been the case for me,” he notes. “One of the big problems with the CDO role initially was that it was all about data governance and the technical aspects of data rather than being focused on business value and understanding the objectives in that context. One of the challenges we’re still seeing is that there still aren’t many CDOs on the board. You talk about how successful data is, well until you’ve got someone on the board who really owns it and drives the integration of data into the strategy and builds cross-functional teams, we’ve still got a way to go.
“For me, the CDO is the conduit of change,” Green continues. “And there’s not one type, it’s very much dependent on the maturity of the organisation. I consider myself, for example, almost as a disruptor – I’m good at coming in, disrupting and really getting that change and momentum going but in another organisation you may need someone who can settle that
change and keep the pace going. Generally, when it comes to momentum, the key point is to understand the different business problems in the organisation from the perspective of the people facing them. You have to have empathy and show you understand, because then you can build relationships that are important in any change. Through that you can get people to understand that many of the problems are collective issues across the business and that it’s more about change than it is technology. Many times I’ve stood before a board for the first time and told them ‘this isn’t about data, it’s about change and if we do this properly the organisation will be doing things very differently.”
In Data Means Business Green and co-author Jason Foster set out a ‘levelling up framework’ for building a data-guided organisation. The method values business outcomes and prioritises an approach that focuses on adding incremental business through five broad stages: Establish, which centres around setting the agenda for data in the organisation; Prove Value, in which the focus is on delivering business value and building foundational capabilities; Scale, which shifts to delivering
“THE BASIS FOR MY UNDERSTANDING OF DATA HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT THE BUSINESS”
business value at scale across the business and cementing core capabilities; Accelerate, considers shortening the time to market for business outcomes; and Optimise is about refining and optimising processes, outcomes and results.
“From the start, proving value is about demonstrating that if you do things differently there’s a positive outcome for the organisation,” says Green. “You have to make it clear right at the beginning that data is an enabler and make people understand that if you don’t do things the way that’s being suggested, we won’t get to where we want to. The framework is pretty clear in its stages. There are, for example, obvious lines at which you can scale; scaling is dependent on the process being efficient, having the right people in place and the technology that is connected and works.
“One thing we recognise is that you may not actually get beyond scale because there may be some areas you just don’t need to optimise because they may be commoditised to a point where they’re very efficient,” Green adds. “On the other hand, you need to optimise things that are going to make the most money, so that’s where you want to start taking it to the next level. The optimisation stage is more about driving innovation, continuing to build new ideas, testing and learning very quickly while at the same time ensuring you recognise what really adds value to the organisation or brings a definite USP.”
To navigate this journey a data strategy must be adaptable to ensure that it remains aligned
to business outcomes and objectives. Green says that any good data strategy is built around the four key components of people, data, technology and process. “From my perspective it’s about setting out very clearly what the business wants to achieve,” he explains. “If you do that and understand how data sits across those objectives, the data strategy becomes a business enabler through which you have defined use cases that allow you to prove value.
“Really, a data strategy is nothing more than saying ‘I know what’s going on in the organisation, I understand what we want to achieve
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and, in order to do that, here are the key considerations from a data perspective. Within that, you need to align with the technology capabilities within the business – that’s important from the outset. The technology team needs to understand the work that’s being done around data because there may be work required to update legacy applications and other systems to support the strategy. When I establish a CDO organisation I have people from across the business on my leadership team, including a dedicated change person, individuals from the CTO function and so on. Those individuals then become conduits into their own functions to really drive the messaging around data across the business.”
Green also advocates for a move away from a data governance approach that has traditionally revolved around command and control and a focus on ‘sorting out data’, to one that is dedicated to enablement. “For me, having the right ownership model in place is important,” he says, “then you have that ownership approach aligned to whatever the governance framework is within the organisation. You’re not creating another way of managing data risk within the business. Instead you’re trying to build the right ways of working within the existing organisational structure and, potentially, to evolve that structure so that it’s a little more flexible. Think about my points on understanding business problems and creating relationships, it’s nothing to do with glossaries or ownership as such. It’s more about taking the organisation and its people on a journey,
building everything that’s needed to make sustainable and scalable change and getting it done.”
Change doesn’t rest. Irrespective of where an organisation or leader is on the levelling up framework set out by Green, it is essential to develop a data strategy that is able to adapt and be flexible enough to mitigate any potential challenges as the pace of technology adoption increases. “It’s just about building a process that can effectively adapt,” says Green. “In the first few years a certain metric may be really important, but as the strategy and the objectives of the business evolve, it may become less so. As a CDO, you have to be able to pivot, so your strategy has to be flexible enough.
“A good data strategy is about putting in place an understanding of where you need to get to, but then the incremental execution of that strategy should focus on building the right foundational steps,” he continues. “It doesn’t matter what organisation you’re in, you have to understand your costs for running your data organisation and know how you can progress towards the end goal. You don’t need to build the skyscraper, you just focus on the foundations and continuously test and learn. If you have the right culture in place that allows you to do that and you’re building towards creating value, you’re on the most important part of the journey.”
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Spain is committed to entrepreneurship, and at the centre of its strategy is Madrid. The capital is increasingly becoming one of the hubs for innovation in Europe, with a flourishing ecosystem of innovative startups, accelerators, VCs and angel investors.
Madrid also offers the perfect combination of work and play, with amazing spots to relax in your downtime between business engagements. Eduardo Martinez Garcia, CEO & Co-Founder at Toqio, a SaaS global financial platform that lets businesses quickly launch and monetise new solutions for customers, takes us on a personal tour of the Spanish capital.
Like many other European startup hubs, Madrid is also full of co-working spaces. Utopicus combines all of the amenities and traditional co-working offers with beautiful decoration and impressive architecture – it’s also a great spot to do some networking.
Loom is also a great choice if you’re looking for a relaxed office to work from and, if like Toqio your company is also
a Fintech, then Aticco María de Molina is the place for you.
I’d also recommend a visit to The Cube , an ecosystem designed to boost innovation and creativity. The space was built so that corporates and startups could work closely together to develop and create innovative products and services.
THE CUBE LOOM
GRAN MELI A ´
The newly renovated Ritz preserves its classical essence while giving a modern vibe to visitors. From here you can enjoy the beautiful city views while having a cocktail with oysters at the famous terrace bar.
If you’re looking for a more relaxed atmosphere, then I’d recommend staying at the Gran Meliá Palacio de los Duques, a hidden gem in the centre of Madrid that has opted
for a Velazquez theme to decorate many of its rooms and common spaces.
Hotel Urban is another great option close to the city centre. It’s very modern and within walking distance from some of Madrid’s most famous landmarks – stay here and you’ll probably be able to squeeze in a visit to Museo del Prado or the Royal Palace between business meetings.
MERCADO DE SAN MIGUEL
MUSEO DEL PRADO
ROYAL PALACE OF MADRID
If you’re looking for traditional Spanish cuisine, look no further than La Posada de la Villa – it’s the place to go. The restaurant dates back to 1642 and has impeccable service with some of the best food you’ll find in Madrid.
For a classic tortilla, I’d recommend Casa Dani – order it with a coffee for the complete local experience!
When I’m in the mood for tapas, I head to Calle Ponzano , which offers many options when it comes to great places to eat. One of my favourites is La Sala de Despiece, a buzzy bar styled like a market butchers shop, complete with bench and counter seating.
You can also never go wrong with the many markets we have here in Madrid. Even though they are very touristy, Mercado San Miguel and the food hall at Galería Canalejas are great places to grab a bite.
GALER I ´A CANALEJAS
Eduardo is an avid entrepreneur who has set up, run and supported numerous ventures over the last 20 years. He spent his early career in senior positions at Accenture, but has years of experience working globally and with startups. After creating and running a number of innovation businesses in the UK, Spain and South Africa, he cofounded Toqio, a SaaS platform that delivers Digital Banking as a Service. Previously, Eduardo and his co-founder Michael Galvin built a small business SaaS startup, Geniac, which was acquired by Grant Thornton. Eduardo is also an Associate Professor at the School of Human Sciences and Technology at IE University.
Toqio provides a SaaS global financial platform that lets businesses quickly launch and monetise new solutions for customers. Founded in 2019 by serial entrepreneurs Eduardo Martinez and Michael Galvin, Toqio enables any business, not just banks, to quickly create and launch game-changing, data-driven, financial products.
https://toqio.co
Madrid has a vibrant nightlife. One experience I’d definitely recommend is WAH, a show that combines music and gastronomy. Trust me: it’s a party you’ll never forget!
Another option to relax is to go to one of the many rooftop bars we have in the city, where you can enjoy some tapas while getting a great view of the capital. One of my personal favourites is the
Terraza Cibeles , located at an iconic building. Order the gin and tonic with Nordés gin – you won’t regret it.
There are also many great bars along the Gran Via , close to Toqio’s office. My tip would be to do some bar hopping in the area as, not only do you get amazing food and drinks, but it’d also be a different way of getting to know the centre of the city.
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