
Senior speakers from official event partners Crown Commercial Service along with Central Digital and Data Office, Local Government Association, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and more...
Plenary speakers

Chair: Cllr Eamonn O’Brien, GMCA Lead for Education, Skills, Work, Apprenticeships & Digital Leader, Bury Council
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Councillor Eamonn O’Brien holds the portfolios for Education, Skills, Work, Apprenticeships and Digital for Greater Manchester Combined Authority. He was appointed leader of Bury Council in May 2020 and has represented the St Mary’s Ward in Prestwich since 2014. Prior to becoming leader, Eamonn worked at the head office of a national charity managing the office administration. He was educated at St Monica’s RC High School in Prestwich and Holy Cross College in Bury. He gained a BA (History and Politics) and MA (History) from University of Manchester. He also set up the country’s first student-led food bank in central Manchester.

Patrick Cahill, Deputy Director of Network Services
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Patrick is the Deputy Director for the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) Network Services Category that incorporates networks, mobile voice and data services and Space enabled technologies.
Before joining CCS he was the Deputy Director for the Cabinet Office’s Strategic Partnering Programme with responsibility for the development and performance of five of the Government’s top forty Strategic Suppliers.
Patrick was also the Cabinet Office Commercial lead for the UK Space Sector, working with Government Departments, Strategic Suppliers, Space Clusters and Trade Organisations to develop the Sector.
He was involved in the development of the National Space Strategy in 2021 and with CCS in the construction of a Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) that gives the Public Sector better access to products and solutions enabled from outer space to improve key public services such as healthcare, the environment, transportation and infrastructure.
He joined the Cabinet Office in May 2014 after a 20-year career in senior management roles with IT companies Sun Microsystems and Dell Computers where he managed commercial operations in the UK, Europe, USA and Asia/Pacific regions and completed international assignments in the USA, Netherlands and Singapore.
Patrick holds a BEng. in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from the University of Strathclyde.

Gillian Stewart, Chief Digital Officer
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With a background in technology and digital transformation across private and public sector, Gill’s career expands over several industries including insurance, education, retail and utilities. Gill joined the civil service two years ago as Chief Technology Officer at the Department of Levelling Up Housing and Communities, inspired by the digital transformation work in the public sector and how it drives a better service for its users. She is now the Chief Digital Officer for the department, which has expanded her remit to encompass working in partnership with local authorities to build safe, resilient, cost effective and sustainable digital services.

Phil Chatterton, Chief Enterprise Architect,
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Phil Chatterton is Chief Enterprise Architect with the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO). He is responsible for leading the cross-government technical and architectural work, in support of the Digital Roadmap. Phil’s background is in digital transformation and has worked across Local, Central Government and the Utility sector both as a supplier and customer. From 2018 he led networks and infrastructure at the Home Office, before joining CDDO in 2022. As a member of the Modernising Technology team, Phil’s focus is the technical and strategic challenges of cloud, legacy IT, emerging technologies and digital engineering. He works with the CTO Council in the development of mature technical governance across Government.

Martin Sadler, Executive Director - IT & Digital
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Martin is the IT Director for Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust. Sandwell & West Birmingham are on a rapid cloud journey with 3 years left to go, are pioneering Artificial Intelligence in radiography and are turning the IT service delivery model inside out.
Martin is beginning his fifth year of working in the NHS following a rainbow of IT leadership experience in retail, fast online fashion, finance and local government amongst others.
Martin is one of the UKs top 100 CIOs (according to the list of top 100 leaders), he trains and coaches other IT leaders and is the author and creator of The CIO Download, which is finally being published this year.

Simon Johnson, Senior Vice President
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Simon is a data-driven, dynamic, personable (and hopefully fun!) leader, with 17 years of proven success in leading business and sales teams within fast-growth tech companies. He specialises in building and evolving sales teams globally.
He has operational expertise and industry knowledge across the full range of verticals, having spent a lot of time building successful Private and Public sector growth strategies and spends a great deal of his time travelling and presenting within organisations, and enjoys coaching his team on sales strategies, tactics and models.
Simon has developed and implemented new processes, sales methodologies and training, is a whiteboard and agile expert, and manages with the ethos of visibility, trust and accountability – he encourages debate.
Simon has frequently contributed to CX, EX and CRM debates and webinars online and was voted in the Top 10 Sales Leaders in 2020 and 2021, he was also voted and awarded #1 CX Star 2021 for his activity and contribution to the Customer Experience community.
Session speakers…

Will Callaghan, Project Lead
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Will is the co-founder and Product Lead of LocalGov Drupal, a shared web publishing platform funded by UK government, and currently used by 34 councils across the UK.
LocalGov Drupal is the first self-sufficient project to emerge from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing, Communities’ Local Digital Fund.
It is a unique collaboration that was created by councils for councils. The idea for this work came when co-founder Will Callaghan and team created a new Drupal website for Brighton & Hove City Council, and it became a reality when Brighton and Croydon councils decided to work on the project together. Today, councils and suppliers help to fund activities by paying membership fees and working in kind.
He has 25 years digital experience with 12 leading agile multi-disciplinary teams. Prior to LocalGov Drupal, he ran transformation projects at 5 UK local authorities. He has also completed 3 tours of duty with the Government Digital Service, working on the transition of government departments to GOV.UK, search and the Performance Platform.
He was also successful in winning DLUHC funding to create the Digital Inclusion Toolkit, working alongside the nationally renowned 100% Digital Leeds programme led by Leeds City Council.
In his spare time, Will founded TechResort, a Sussex based not-for-profit aiming to boost the technical and creative skills of young people and help communities get online.
About LocalGov Drupal
LocalGov Drupal is a community of developers, content designers and digital leaders from local councils across the UK.
We collaborate to develop a best practice, open source website publishing platform that is freely available to all UK councils.
Together we aim to create sector wide digital transformation by developing a shared pool of code, resources, research and expertise.
We’re motivated by a desire to help councils deliver the best possible digital experience for citizens, and reduce the risks and costs associated with council websites.
We want as many people as possible to benefit from this project. We welcome contributions in a variety of forms from inside and outside local government, building on the strength of open source communities both in the UK and beyond. Discover how you and your council team can participate.

Mike Culshaw, Chief Technology Officer
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Martin Dean, Chief Digital Transformation Officer of Healthcare
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A Transformational and high impact CTO/CIO/CDxO with extensive business technology and IT transformational expertise in multiple industries, and a focus on complex environments such as NHS healthcare.

Andy Ellis, Technology Service Delivery Manager
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I have been at Citizens Advice for almost 5 years and I look after all our national software systems and hardware. Over the last 6 months we have rolled out a new telephony system to approximately 12,000 staff and volunteers across England and Wales. One of the exciting projects we have on the horizon is to fully automate our starters and leavers process so it requires no interaction from the Service Desk.

Andrea Fitzgerald, Head of Region (South) and GIIG Procurement Champion
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Douglas Hamandishe,
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Dan Howard, leads on Spark: The Innovation Marketplace
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Dan has been working at CCS since 2012, and has worked across a number of different technology agreements. Currently he leads on Spark: The Innovation Marketplace which allows suppliers to offer cutting edge technology solutions. Dan has a keen interested in emerging technologies and is currently focussed on delivering digital health solutions across the NHS and Social Care Services.

Connie Hutchins, Senior Commercial Lead
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Connie joined CCS in late 2019, coming from a technology background spanning 20+ years primarily within the NHS. Since joining she has led on a number of key initiatives including the delivery of the Technology Services 3 agreement and is currently supporting strategic thinking on the delivery of health technology within CCS.

Simon Johnson, Senior Vice President UKI & I
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Simon is a data-driven, dynamic, personable (and hopefully fun!) leader, with 17 years of proven success in leading business and sales teams within fast-growth tech companies. He specialises in building and evolving sales teams globally.
He has operational expertise and industry knowledge across the full range of verticals, having spent a lot of time building successful Private and Public sector growth strategies and spends a great deal of his time travelling and presenting within organisations, and enjoys coaching his team on sales strategies, tactics and models.
Simon has developed and implemented new processes, sales methodologies and training, is a whiteboard and agile expert, and manages with the ethos of visibility, trust and accountability – he encourages debate.
Simon has frequently contributed to CX, EX and CRM debates and webinars online and was voted in the Top 10 Sales Leaders in 2020 and 2021, he was also voted and awarded #1 CX Star 2021 for his activity and contribution to the Customer Experience community.

Simon Lewis, Partner - Construction and Engineering
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Fiona Moore, Technical Lead
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Marc Owen, Head of Customer Experience, IM&T/Digital
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Rob Paddon, UK and Ireland Territory Manager
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Rob has over 20 years’ experience in the IT industry, having worked for organisations including Gartner Group, Siemens, BT and Microsoft among others.
He is responsible for a number of vertical industry market sectors for Origina where his role is to help enable IT teams to better leverage software related technical debt, drive down operational cost and risk and release resources and funding to accelerate cloud and digital change programmes.

Peter Roche, Digital Framework and Procurement Policy Lead
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Andrew Shilton, Head of Solutions
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Andrew Shilton has 18 years’ experience in the communications industry and has designed a wide range of innovative solutions to address client challenges. As Head of Solutions at MLL Telecom, he is focused on developing new ways to integrate technologies that can deliver real day-to-day improvements for public sector organisations.

Charlie Stephens, Digital Framework Strategy and Policy Manager
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Phil Swan, Director for Digital
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Damon Thomas, CEO
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Damon is a successful entrepreneur and CEO of SENSEi Networks Limited, a specialist IoT solutions provider and development house providing best in breed IoT PaaS and SaaS solutions to business, enterprise and public sector customers.
Having been at the forefront of IoT development in the UK the past 8 years, Damon is recognised for his valuable thought leadership and ability to inform, shape and help clients execute successful digital transformation strategies.

Stuart Watkins, Senior Business Development Manager
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Stuart Watkins joined Crown Commercial Service (CCS) in June 2019 ,as part of a new Customer Experience function for CCS’s wider public sector customers. Because of his background in the health sector Stuart was asked to be the strategy lead for the NHS in April 2021 . Since then Stuart has been working hard with fellow colleagues across CCS to provide our health customers with value for money buying solutions, expert knowledge, supplier innovation and excellent customer service to secure the best possible outcomes for patients, NHS Staff and the taxpayer.

Llewellyn Wells, Solutions Consultant
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John Witt, Co-Founder and CEO
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John Witt is the co-founder & CEO of Stotles – a London based startup; Stotles is the platform for doing business with government, used by 1000’s of companies daily, including Workday, Salesforce, and Civica.
John is passionate about developing new technology to help businesses and government work better together. He is particularly obsessed with solving the pain points affecting buyers and suppliers throughout the procurement life-cycle.
Hailing from sunny California, John moved to London in 2017 as he and his co-founders founded Stotles in the halls of London Business School. Outside of work, John is an enthusiastic father, husband and tennis player who can’t wait to meet you at Digital First.

Matthew Wood-Hill, Head of Planning Software
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Speaker tbc, Blackpool Council
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Speaker tbc, Socitm
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More speakers here soon...
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Speakers, agenda and times may be subject to change