In this final episode of our secure connected places series, five leading experts review all the themes from across the series, and discuss the challenges places are facing when deploying IoT:

Professor Rachel Cooper OBE, Lady

Rachel is Distinguished Professor of Design Management and Policy at Lancaster University. Much of which her research has focused on the future of cities and human and planetary wellbeing. She has published extensively on these topics, including books, 'Designing Sustainable Cities', 'The Handbook of Wellbeing and the Environment' and ‘Living in Digital Worlds; designing the digital public space’. She was a Lead Expert for the UK Government Foresight programme on the Future of Cities and latterly Chair of Built Environment Subcommittee of the Oxford Commission for Creating Healthy Cities.

Farah Ahmed

Farah Ahmed heads the Cyber Security Policy Team for connected places at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Farah has previously worked in the Cabinet Office, Defra, and DCMS on a range of policies, including data standards, international digital policy, open data and transparency, horizon scanning, data transformation and strategy, data ethics and digital identity.

Olivia Gass

Olivia is a Policy Advisor for the Secure Connected Places team at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. She works on the team’s demand policy and leads several projects working to support the cyber security of organisations procuring and managing connected places technologies. Prior to joining the Secure Connected Places team, Olivia worked in the private sector as a consultant to some of the UK’s largest infrastructure projects.  

Yalena Coleman:

Yalena is a leader in technology and data who has worked across Europe, Asia and Africa, with a focus on data governance, digital strategy, software and product development, IoT and cybersecurity. She is currently the Director of Applied Data and Technology at Connected Places Catapult, the UK’s innovation accelerator for places and transport. Her portfolio includes the Digital Twin (DT) Hub, the Climate Resilience Digital Twin Demonstrator, and the Digital Connectivity Infrastructure Accelerator amongst others.

Alex Gluhak:

Alex describes himself as being “on a mission to democratise access to real time urban data [so others can create better urban futures]”. With over 20 years’ experience in smart city technologies, IoT and urban data solutions, Alex founded Urban Data Collective in 2020 and was previously the Head of IoT Technologies at the Digital Catapult, [and worked for global technology leaders such as Intel and Ericsson].

Links listeners may find useful from our conversation:

• https://www.gov.uk/guidance/secure-connected-places-playbook the alpha Secure Connected Places Playbook which DSIT refer to. 
• https://www.gov.uk/guidance/secure-connected-places for more information on the DSIT’s Secure Connected Places work programme as a whole 

As ever, thank you to Professor Alan Chamberlain for gifting his AI generated music which we have used throughout this series.

This episode explores the public perceptions, complex ethics and potential privacy threats of IoT in public spaces. Unusually have a two-parted episode:

Part one bring together two experts in the ethics of surveillance and IoT to discuss IoT and sensors in public spaces in the context of ethics, privacy and surveillance ethics: Can we opt out of IoT in public spaces? How do we communicate with people living in smart cities to secure informed consent, is this even possible? Who is most vulnerable the the privacy threats that come with increased deployment of IoT?

Dr Kevin Macnish is Consulting Senior Manager in Digital Ethics at Sopra Steria. He was formerly Assistant Professor of Ethics and IT in the Philosophy Dept. at the University of Twente and before that Teaching Fellow at the University of Leeds, where he retains a visiting research fellowship. Kevin's research and interests lie in the ethics of surveillance, cybersecurity and technology

Dr Peter Novitzky is a senior research fellow at PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity, Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP), UCL, specialising in the ethical challenges of AI, safety and security. Peter’s research often explores the ethics of artificial intelligence for vulnerable populations and he is co-I on PETRAS funded project Red Aid, addressing the issue of voice-based social engineering attacks.

In part 2 we hear about the PETRAS project, P-PITEE, which stands for Participatory Policies for IoT (at the Edge) Ethics. Working with Lancaster City Council, this project developed a new policy for transparent and ethical use of IoT and edge technology in public spaces. This was done through the use of design methods to develop effective local policies for the governance of secure city-based IoT deployments and the resultant data; and to develop an existing transparency prototype into a fully developed tool which will support organisations in their assessment of system transparency and ethical practice. This has now spun out into Taking IoT for a Walk which is testing these methods further with four more local authorities. The TrustLens tool which P-PITEE produced can be found here.

Dr Louise Mullagh's cross-disciplinary research explores the use of design in processes of policy making for emerging technologies (e.g., AI, IoT and digital platforms). She is based at Imagination Lancaster. Her work uses design methods to understand the complex ecosystem of policy and governance in this area, where public and organisational policies collide. 

As ever, thank you to Professor Alan Chamberlain for gifting his AI generated music which we have used throughout this series.

This is the second of two episodes focussing on transport and mobility within connected places. In our last episode we focussed on the technology and infrastructure, this time we consider the drivers, passengers and pedestrians: the trust we have in the technology, the perceptions towards privacy and security which matter when it comes to transport, and the accountability we expect of those delivering local transport solutions. We enjoyed a very lively chat between two experts who each have multiple perspectives on this topic:

• Tom Forth is the CTO and co-founder of The Data City and is Head of Data at Open Innovations where they are a part of a team producing civic technology used by hundreds of thousands of Britons every day to do things like check where their bus is and when their bins will be collected. You can find Tom’s sharp observations on public data and transport infrastructure on Twitter and LinkedIn.
• Dr Richard Gomer is Lecturer in Computer Science, working in the Web, AI and Society research group. They work in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, with a particular interest in how individuals and groups interact with large-scale systems, how those systems are designed, and how things like values and agency play out within them. Richard is PI of PETRAS project UMIS which investigates mechanisms for increasing user trust in Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) in an IoT ecosystem for the next-generation transportation-systems. Richard also represents West End North as a councillor on Eastleigh Borough Council and brings this perspective into the conversation. You can find Richard on Twitter and LinkedIn 

As ever, thank you to Professor Alan Chamberlain for gifting his AI generated music which we have used throughout this series.