Martin Rayson is currently Head of Human Resources and Organisational Development at the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, a post he has filled since May 2010. Martin's career, though, has included the most senior HR role in two county councils, Essex and Lincolnshire, and he has also been the Director of Resources in a district council. This career history has enabled him to get an insight into people management and organisational change issues across all parts of local government. Martin has also worked in the social housing sector and as a business coach.
Martin is President of the Public Sector People Managers' Association (PPMA). The PPMA represents the interests of over 1,000 members working across the people management and development professions within the public sector, including local and central government, the police service and fire and rescue authorities. As President, Martin leads the PPMA's efforts to promote world-class HR practice in the public sector.



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Chris Edwards worked in industry for 12 years, involved in developing business systems. During that time he qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant and, hence, tended to specialise in financial information systems. After gaining his MA he joined the Scottish Business School as a Lecturer. Upon receiving a PhD he moved to Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA, and then to the Chair of Management Information Systems at Cranfield University.
His interests lie in IT-enabled business change, particularly in the role required of very senior organisational management to successfully action such change. Recently his focus has been the development of proposals for change investments to deliver real value. In this area he has conducted seminars on benefits/change management throughout the world. His talents lie in engaging senior management in the subject, in a non-technical and involving manner.
Chris is an experienced international speaker, engaging and interactive. He has worked with a multitude of organisations in both the public and private sectors. Recently he has worked with two large banking organisations and the United Nations in Vienna.

Presentation: Securing value from management information: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater

For the last 10 years or so IT professionals have been striving, with difficulty, to ensure that each and every pound spent on technology yields significant returns. The task is not easy and is not yet successful in every single organisation. However, just as the finishing post comes into sight, the whole process is being questioned on the basis that it is not relevant to 'management information' type applications. Should we accept the inapplicability of this process to these types of applications and create new methods or should we seriously question the purposes of those suggesting this view? This short presentation will examine the situation and suggest minor changes to the existing methods to ensure value is secured from management information type applications.

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Julian McCrae joined the Institute for Government in July 2009 and is the institute's Director of Research. He is responsible for overseeing the institute's work on improving the effectiveness of government. This focuses on reform of the UK's central government machinery in Whitehall, in both its policymaking and governance roles for the rest of the public sector. The institute also examines how this government machinery can fit better within the UK's wider parliamentary and political system.
Julian has headed a number of projects at the institute, including 'Improving Decision Making in Government', which looked at how Whitehall departments could improve the use of management information in decision-making. Julian is currently leading the institute's work on how government could work differently to best support economic growth, which is part of a wider collaboration with the London School of Economics Growth Commission.
Prior to the institute, Julian was Deputy Director at the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, leading its work on social mobility, welfare policies and economics. His other experience in government includes two spells in the Treasury, and as a special adviser at the Department for Work and Pensions.
Julian's career began at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UK's foremost research institute on fiscal policy. His work there included numerous publications on personal taxation and welfare systems, and he led the Institute's research programme on corporate taxation and business investment. Julian has also worked at Frontier Economics, one of the UK's leading economic consultancies, where he helped expand the public policy practice.

Presentation: Improving decision-making and assurance through effective use of information

To make informed managerial decisions about how to effectively allocate their limited resources, public sector organisations must collect and analyse accurate and prompt feedback information about all the activities they fund – for assurance of successes, and swift and appropriate responses to failures.
With reference to a number of areas within the public sector where the use of management information is being improved, this talk will provide a clear understanding of the common factors underpinning positive change, and provide inspiration for methods to spread these successes.

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Tom Steinberg is the Founder and Director of mySociety, a social enterprise that has pioneered many technology tools that have changed the relationship between the government and the public.
Tom was the driving force behind mySociety's popular UK civic sites such as FixMyStreet, TheyWorkForYou and WhatDoTheyKnow, now much copied around the world. He led many web transformation projects, working at both local and national levels, and advised governments and company boards on making best use of technology.
Tom co-authored the Power of Information Review in 2007, and spent the past two years on the Public Sector Transparency Board.

Presentation: If it works for them, it will work for you

Managers are used to thinking of management information tools as services that are accessible to senior management and nobody else. In his talk, Tom will argue that the disciplines that make information easily digestible to modern internet users are the same as needed by managers in pressured work environments. Tom will also give pointers about the kinds of information services that could exist, but most often don't.

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Mark has been at SAS for 12 years in the Public Sector Industry Practice developing his expertise in Health, Welfare and Fraud. Mark has worked with clients such as the DWP, HMRC, NHS, MoD and Local Government in the areas of Data Management and Business Analytic and has used his analytical skills to deliver against complex business requirements and ensuring that these public sector bodies derive value from their programmes. Mark holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Natal, South Africa.

Presentation: Envisioning the future with data visualisation – Enabling your Data

Gain more dynamic insight, foresight, reporting and exploration capabilities, provide for more probing research, enhance mobility, including the ability to carry data out into the field and share it with customers. SAS gives you this ability to access data anytime and anywhere for deeper insights that inspire better decisions.

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Barry McIntyre has been working at the forefront of statistics and analytics since 1995. Since founding Presidion, formally SPSS Ireland, he has pioneered the use of predictive analytics in decision-making across multiple industries. He is a highly recognised speaker on predictive analytics and lectures to the Trinity College MBA class on quantitative analysis and predictive analytics.
Barry has deployed leading-edge solutions within the government sector. It is more important than ever to make smart decisions that generate measurable benefits. Barry, as Director of Presidion, has been helping local government, central government and public bodies do exactly that for 17 years. Presidion has assisted public sector executives in optimising resources and meeting objectives by helping them use their data to understand trends in events, behaviours, or attitudes, and plan effective, efficient action to these events.

Presentation: Use of predictive analytics in local government, its effect on cost savings and service delivery

This case study will provide an overview of the use of predictive analytics in multiple local government areas. It will focus on issues that exist within different departments and how predictive analytics can be used to create positive and measurable outcomes. The case study will examine the use of predictive analytics and highlight the issues and obstacles typically encountered when implementing predictive analytics and how to overcome resistance to evidence-based change. It will also examine a successful and usable process that can be followed to help provide better local government services at lower costs using predictive analytics. Participants will leave with a clear knowledge of how predictive analytics can help them and understand how to implement a predictive analytical process to drive better local government in their organisation.

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Brian Wernham has more than 30 years' experience in adaptive project leadership. He has extensive international experience, having worked in the USA, the UK, Canada, Hong Kong, Germany and on offshore development in Bangalore.
Brian's first book Agile Project Management for Government was recently published by Maitland and Strong. By the time the term 'Agile' was first coined, Brian had already been successfully leading iterative, adaptive projects for over 10 years on both sides of the Atlantic. He works as a hands-on programme manager and has real-world implementation expertise together with a comprehensive understanding of the related international research.
Brian has consulted for major strategic international organisations such as Gartner Group, the National Audit Office in London and Seer Technologies in North Carolina. His comprehensive public sector experience includes the Department for International Development, the World Bank, the United Nations (Geneva), and local government authorities.
Brian is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management, a Fellow of the BCS and he has an MBA from Henley Management College. He applies adaptive planning approaches as an offshore yachtmaster and as a keen off-piste skier. He is currently consulting for the UK government in London.

Presentation: Learning from successes and failures

As well as looking to best practice case studies to improve our own performance, it can also be helpful to mitigate failures by heeding those of others.
This talk will draw from examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly in the use of management information by central government in both the USA and the UK. How can we measure the delivery of services and success of projects the Agile way and what are the common factors in success that you can adopt in your own work?

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A4S seeks to leverage the power of the accounting and finance community to help drive a sustainable, resilient economy. A4S recently launched the report 'Future proofed decision making: Integrating environmental and social factors into strategy, finance and operations', which sets out the business case for the integration of environmental and social information into decision-making, an analysis of key research in this area, and identification of key next steps, including what A4S is doing to scale up how organisations tackle these challenges.
Through her role at A4S, Sarah is on the Board of the TEEB for Business Coalition and is an assessor for the Finance for the Future Awards, which reward business and public sector sustainability led by the finance team. Sarah is on secondment to A4S from Deloitte where she provided sustainability advice to a range of public and private organisations. Sarah is a chartered accountant, has an MSc (Distinction) in Environmental Sciences from Imperial College London and a BA in Biological Sciences from Oxford University.


Presentation: Future proofed decision making: Integrating sustainability considerations into strategy, finance and operations

Changing mind-set, decision-making processes and reporting are probably the biggest organisational challenges faced by both the public and private sectors in responding to the 'sustainability revolution'. Although many organisations now have sustainability policies, relatively few have robust systems and procedures to embed these consistently and effectively into the 'DNA' of their businesses.
A4S helps to communicate the business case for embedding sustainability into decision-making, and works towards the development of new approaches to accounting that will enable organisations in business, investment and the public sector to better understand, and, where appropriate, value 'externalities' (i.e. environmental or social benefits or impacts for which they are not paying), and incorporate these externalities into their decision-making processes.
The talk will include case study examples of organisations that have begun to embed sustainability into their day-to-day business decisions.

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Peter Fleming first stood for election to Sevenoaks District Council in 1999 and within two years was a cabinet member; he became leader of the council in 2005 and remains in that post today. Having served on the Local Government Associations Improvement Board for a number of years, he was made Chairman in 2011 and is working on a large cross-cutting agenda ranging from procurement to sector-led improvement, from audit to leadership.
Peter is a strong advocate that innovation rather than evolution is the only hope for the future of public services and that there is no better time than now to instigate significant change.

Presentation: Collating and comparing local government intelligence to save resources

Following increasing calls from local government for greater freedom to take responsibility for its own improvement, the Local Government Association has developed a free online service allowing employees within the sector to access compare and analyse information about their own and neighbouring authorities. With data drawn from local and national sources, and the opportunity for users to input their own, this system ensures more rigorous and informed evidence-based decision-making.
This talk will discuss the development of this management information system, suggest a variety of uses, and give examples of successes so far through its implementation.

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