Tech For Good - Issue 20

GOOGLE AND MARS’ PLAN TO SAVE THE CORAL REEFS VIRGIN MEDIA 02 ON DRONE INNOVATION IN HEALTHCARE THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE’S HUMAN RIGHTS MISSION ASHISH PRASHAR ON OBAMA, BLAIR AND SECOND CHANCES

ISSUE 20

DIGITAL HARROW London’s Harrow Council has embarked on a transformative programme to improve the lives of its residents. We go behind the scenes of the digital evolution

DANIEL BRIGHAM Content Director

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T

he pandemic has changed everything. It required IT to really step up.”

This sentence could be applied to a multitude of industries. The response to COVID-19 forced companies to rethink their IT strategies, starting from the same base: embracing digital, and then embracing it some more.

Some organisations, such as Harrow Council, had already started down that path before the pandemic hit. Ben Goward, the council’s Director of Information Communication Technology, is the man behind that quote, and the man behind Harrow’s bold journey to better serve its 250,000 residents.

Nowhere does revolutionising IT systems matter more than in the public sector. It directly impacts people’s lives, and determines how businesses operate. Goward, and his colleagues at Harrow, talk us through their digital transformation, spelling out how better

efficiency and productivity across the council’s IT systems, tools and devices means better efficiency and productivity for its residents.

Away from our cover story, we speak to Google, Mars Petcare, and AMV BBDO to find out why they teamed up to help restore the coral reefs – including building a reef off the coast of Indonesia. We also delve into drone innovation, with Virgin Media O2 talking us through its importance to the future of healthcare.

We also have two great interviews.

The Council of Europe’s Director of Information Society, Jan Kleijssen, talks to us about protecting human rights in the face of the rise of AI. Ashish Prashar tells us his story of transforming from youth offender to working for Tony Blair, Barack Obama, and Boris Johnson, and the need for open hiring practices.

I hope you enjoy the issue!

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TALK TO US hello@strangers.media

CONTENTS 06

GLOBAL GOOD

From space missions to smart city volunteers, we round up the news

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CASE STUDY

Behind the scenes of Harrow Council’s digital transformation

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ENVIRONMENT

How Mars Petcare, Google, and AMV BBDO are saving the coral reefs

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10 MINUTES WITH… Martin Kochman, VP, Head of Customers and Industries at Hitachi Vantara

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HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE Expert Insight: Janice Zdankus on tech’s role in global food security

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INFOSYS

Expert Insight: Mohit Joshi on the metaverse’s educational opportunities

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GOOD OR BAD?

Are brain-computer interfaces ethical?

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LEADERSHIP

Ashish Praswar on opening up new talent pools

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PUBLIC SECTOR

The Council of Europe’s mission to regulate artificial intelligence

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VIRGIN MEDIA O2

Expert Insight: David Owens on drones innovation in healthcare

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GLOBAL GOOD

US tech giants abandon Russia after Ukraine invasion Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing conflict, many tech giants are stopping sales of products and services in the country.

These include AWS, Amazon, Intel, IBM, Nokia, and Microsoft. Google and Twitter have suspended advertising in Russia and cracked down on measures to control the spread of misinformation.

Landmark EU law to regulate tech giants Apple, Amazon, Meta, and Google are some of the companies that might be affected by the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. The new legislation sets out a list of dos and don’ts for technology “gatekeepers”, with the goal of promoting fairer business practices.

The French government has hailed it as “the most important economic regulation in recent decades”.

Source: Financial Times

Source: CNET

GLOBAL GOOD In case you missed them, we’ve debriefed six of the most interesting Tech For Good stories from the last four weeks 6

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Brazil lifts ban on Telegram Brazil has lifted its ban on Telegram after the country’s Supreme Court blocked the messaging app for failing to comply with court orders.

Now, the company has made changes to help keep misinformation at bay in the country, which includes removing classified information shared by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and label posts that contain false information.

Source: The Washington Post

NEWS DEBRIEF

South Korea builds a fully-smart city based on data The first families have volunteered to pilot Busan’s Eco Delta Smart City, one of the world’s more far-reaching attempts to create “smart cities.” The project was designed to leverage the capabilities of cutting-edge technology like robots, AR, and AI that hopes to bring greater convenience to its residents and improve the lives of the country’s ageing population.

Source: New York Times

Israel startup to test brain-activity gear in a space mission

Apollo Agriculture raises $40m to help local farmers Kenya-based agritech Apollo Agriculture has raised $40 million in a Series B funding round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2. The company uses satellite imagery data of farms and AI to rate the creditworthiness of farmers, helping them access high-quality farm inputs, financing and markets. Apollo Agriculture plans to double the number of farmers it is serving by the end of 2022.

Israel-based startup Brain-Space has announced its plans to put its gear on the astronauts that will participate in the first private flight to the International Space Station. The gear includes a special electroencephalogram (EEG)enabled helmet that will look at how microgravity impacts brain activity.

Source: Reuters

Source: TechCrunch ISSUE 20

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CASE STUDY

THE COUNCIL OF CHANGE Harrow Council’s IT team take Tech For Good behind the scenes of a digital transformation programme that is improving the lives of its workers and residents

PROJECT DIRECTOR: Romily Broad AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía VIDEOGRAPHER: Fraser Harrop

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HARROW COUNCIL

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CASE STUDY

A

s living organisms, boroughs are in constant change. In 1852, the city of Harrow had 141 residents. Today, its council serves a vibrant and diverse community of over 250,000 people, and it keeps growing day by day.

Therefore, the borough is no stranger to introducing new services that will improve the lives of all its residents. The COVID-19 pandemic required local authorities to quickly adapt and Harrow wasted no time in stepping up to the challenge.

Two years ago, Harrow Council embarked on an ambitious journey to modernise all aspects of how it works.

Its mission was to wholly transform its culture, policies, and estate to foster a more vibrant and agile working environment for staff. In turn, they would be better 10

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placed to move quickly and innovate in delivering enhanced, customer-centric and continually improving services to residents. To do this, transforming the IT systems was a foundational step.

The project is focused on transitioning to remote and collaborative ways of working, as well as migrating its IT systems to the cloud, including the frontline systems that deliver the day-to-day services that Harrow’s residents depend on. To explain the impact of this project, the council’s IT team take Tech For Good behind the scenes of its path towards digital transformation.

Ben Goward joined Harrow as Director of Information Communication Technology in April 2020, during the height of the pandemic. When he arrived he found a council whose IT systems had been

HARROW COUNCIL

outsourced for 10 years, and that was struggling to adapt to the requirements of remote work. In order to improve the productivity of the council and the services that it provides to its residents during those trying times, it was imperative to invest in IT. “When I joined, my priority was to respond to the COVID pandemic by rolling out devices that people could use when working from home, and to improve collaboration within the organisation as well,” Goward says. “Our IT strategy here is very much about moving to the cloud, and improving the agility and efficiency of the council.”

The council had built up a long legacy of old IT systems; all its IT services were on-premise and employees were using

older Windows systems to store information in a single data centre located in the council’s Civic Centre - a building earmarked for demolition.

“We are redeveloping our main Civic Centre site into social housing,” he says.

“That means we have to move our legacy data centre and all of our core systems into the cloud.

“One of the things I wanted to do with this change is alter the relationship between our service users and the IT department.

We brought elements of IT back in-house, and we trained up our service desk and our frontline staff to be really focused on what the user need was and how we could best serve that as an IT team.”

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CASE STUDY

Our IT strategy here is very much about moving to the cloud and improving the agility and efficiency of the council” Ben Goward

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HARROW COUNCIL

In early 2021, the organisation began the migration of the estate to Azure, allowing in-house and cloud services to run in parallel, so the council could take advantage of the best of both systems.

Catherine Little, Harrow Council’s Head of IT Operations, explains the benefits of designing a new hybrid model of work that will adapt to the changes that the council is undergoing and the challenges that come with a crisis like COVID-19.

“I’ve worked at Harrow for a very long time and we’ve always undergone lots of change,” Little says. “We’d outsourced our IT service for 10 years, so we wanted to look at how we could deliver those

services slightly differently. It was about being able to adapt to fast-paced change and wanting to bring back control. We went for a hybrid model because we felt that was the best way to adapt and react to the requirements of the service. Now we’ve got some services managed by third parties, and some of them are in-house.

We just feel that we’ve got that control and that say over how we deliver our services.”

Although the plan to make this IT transformation always existed, the pandemic forced the IT team to undertake the ambitious cloud migration programme in a very short time. During the last year, the council has migrated all of its infrastructure, ISSUE 20

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CASE STUDY

including about 300 line-of-business systems, to the cloud. At the same time, it has introduced a new service delivery model, which has required its workforce to learn a new set of skills.

The council’s IT is changing and ways of working need to change as well. For example, the council has launched its own IT service management tool, which allows users to interface through a portal instead of email.

The organisation has also introduced audio-visual equipment in offices to run hybrid meetings, and has rolled out Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 tools. These new tools have been fundamental during the last year, where most of the council’s employees have worked from home, allowing real-time communication and information sharing despite the physical distance between team members.

“The pandemic has changed everything,” Goward says. “It required IT to really step up, to make sure that our staff, when working from home, could still be productive and continue to deliver the services that we need to deliver as a local authority.”

The biggest symbol of change in Harrow is the closing of the local Civic Centre.

Council staff will move into a smaller collaborative working space, much more geared towards new ways of working. In the new location, traditional desks will give room to café style working, where staff equipped with the latest technology will run hybrid meetings and develop projects collaboratively.

“We’re in the middle of a modernisation programme, which is about not just changing technology, but about changing the way that people work,” Little says.

“IT obviously has to support that.

We have to be able to adapt at very short notice and our users and our residents have to be front and centre of everything that we do, because they are the most important part. We shape our services around their requirements, rather than what we think that they should have.”

People are a fundamental piece of Harrow’s IT vision, from those that make up the council population to every person who works every day in the council halls, and now, remote working spaces.

The pandemic has changed everything. It required IT to really step up” Ben Goward

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HARROW COUNCIL

In Partnership: Version 1 Version 1 worked alongside Harrow’s IT team to drive the council’s digitalisation journey and improve the lives of its residents

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Why settle for a good place to work when you can choose a great one?

At Version 1, we are a people business. The game-changing IT services and solutions that we offer our clients wouldn’t be possible without great people leading the charge.

JOIN OUR TEAM: www.version1.com/careers

CASE STUDY

Our residents have to be front and centre of everything we do” Catherine Little

In order to ensure that users are able to adapt to the new technologies and that the council is introducing tools that actually make a positive impact in their day-to-day work, Little works with a dedicated technology adoption team, that is able to identify the tools that are being used and the aspects that people struggle with.

“We’re constantly trying to push the new technology and make people feel 18

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comfortable using IT because that is one of the biggest challenges,” she says.

“The engagement with everybody during the transformation was actually quite easy, because people were clamouring for something different, and they knew that some of the traditional methods had to go. But the transition from the traditional methods to new technology is an ongoing process, and we are just constantly looking for new things to do.”

HARROW COUNCIL

During the last 18 months, Harrow has been working tirelessly to roll out new devices and operating stems and move its data centre to the cloud. In addition to more efficient working, the transformation has also allowed the council to cut down costs, as it only will have to pay for the services that it consumes, instead of paying for a core system to be hosted internally. A little over a year in, a lot of its core systems have gone live in their new cloud

mode, to very positive customer satisfaction ratings.

“The key benefits of moving to the cloud for Harrow are that we become much more agile in terms of how users access the core systems and data that they need to do their job,” Goward says. “Moving our systems into the cloud has made us more agile and efficient as an organisation.

“Top-level sponsorship is always very important in a project as on this scale, and we’ve been very fortunate in Harrow that the chief executive and the exec directorship team have been really supportive of the projects that we’ve been running.

They’ve been willing to invest where we’ve needed to invest and they’ve helped us through the difficult times. It’s been a collective achievement.”

As Harrow Council has moved its systems to the cloud, it has increasingly become dependent on the expertise of partners, who are helping the IT team with the process of migrating its systems to the cloud. A critical partner in the journey is Version-1.

The relationship between the council and Version 1 began in May 2020 and remains strong today. The company has been supporting organisations through their digital transformation initiatives for the past 25 years. Version 1 worked alongside Harrow’s IT team to develop a plan to modernise its applications and migrate its servers to Azure. As the work has progressed, the council has leaned ISSUE 20

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further on Version 1’s expertise to tackle additional projects that will further drive the council’s digitalisation journey.

“Of the third parties that we use, Version 1 are probably the biggest supplier in terms of the breadth and the range of the services that they provide,” Little says.

“They support all of our applications and hosting, and they’re absolutely front-andcentre of our cloud migration. They also do a lot around social value, which is really important to us as an organisation.”

Despite the challenges brought forth by the pandemic, both organisations have been working together remotely as one team. The key to success has been trust and a shared goal to improve the lives of the residents of Harrow - a key thread of 20

TECH FOR GOOD

Version 1’s mission statement is to transform lives as well as technology, and it is sewn into all its contracts.

“We’ve got a lot of big projects still to come with Version 1 and we’re confident they’re going to be successful,” Goward adds.

The ultimate beneficiaries of this transformation will be the people of Harrow, who are always at the core of every project the council completes. In order to ensure they have access to the services on which they depend, the council is now enabling browser-based applications. These new features will change the way residents interact with the council and create more efficient communication between the people of Harrow and their local authority.

In the future, the IT transformation will also

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Above and beyond Borough residents are Harrow Council’s most important concern. When looking for a partner to support its IT transformation, it was fundamental to Harrow that its partner in such a missioncritical exercise shared the same community-centric values.

In addition to supporting the council’s IT transformation, Version 1 has added social value to the partnership by actively working with colleges and other community groups in the area to offer tutoring, work experience, and apprenticeships. At the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, Version 1 worked to adapt its work placements to a remote footing, rather than reducing or cancelling them, distributing students across different teams to make sure they didn’t lose pace with a changing job market. The project has been an incredible success and has received very positive feedback from both students and local authorities.

“People are the most important thing to Harrow, and I think the way that Version 1 deliver their services and the way that we work collaboratively together, you can absolutely see that,” says Catherine Little, Harrow Council’s Head of IT Operations. “There are defined lines in the contract, but they go above and beyond that.

“An example is when we did some workplaces with students. They were meant to provide two or three workplaces and they ended up doing four or five. They’re very giving of their time. It’s 80 hours to support the students in their work and whenever I’ve gone to them I never hear ‘No’. It’s always ‘Yes’. They’re a great partner.”

Version 1 and Harrow Council spoke to Tech For Good about their social value strategy last July. Learn more about it here.

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CASE STUDY

Migrating to the cloud has helped us in making sure that we don’t need to spend time looking after our infrastructure and we’re able to focus our efforts on supporting our council services” Minali Jones

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HARROW COUNCIL

lead to automated and digitalised systems that will improve residents’ lives.

Minali Jones, Head of IT Business Management at Harrow Council, explains that it’s not about having the latest technology, but about having the technology that best addresses the needs of the residents.

“We’re not an IT company,” Jones says.

“Our core service is to ensure that we’re able to provide an IT service to support the council services that we provide to residents. Migrating to the cloud has helped us in making sure that we don’t need to spend time looking after our infrastructure and we’re able to focus our efforts on supporting our council services.

“This will happen through better automation and improving mobile technology that we provide frontline services with, whether that be picking up the bins through to social workers going out into the community and helping our vulnerable residents.”

Recently, Harrow Council completed the cloud migration of its revenues and benefits system, which is a fundamental part of its services. The council uses this system to collect all of its revenue and to pay benefits for some of the neediest members of the community. The migration has been extremely successful, with users reporting that it’s performing better than it ever did on-premise.

The success of this launch opens the door to many more improvements in the months to come. Now that most of the

systems are live, it is time for the Harrow team to take advantage of them, and use them as a base from which to build on future applications.

“The future of Harrow IT is going to be very much about exploiting the new technology platform that we put in place,” Goward says.

“We’ll be looking to expand on the cloud systems that we’ve implemented and the use of data and analytics, and increasingly artificial intelligence and automation, to make the council even more efficient and responsive to our resident’s needs.”

Harrow’s IT transformation - as well as the makeup of the local population - will never stop evolving. Its transition to cloud-based systems has been a fundamental milestone on the Council’s modernisation journey.

Now, armed with these new digital systems, Harrow is a step closer to achieving its mission of becoming an agile, technologically driven, equal and diverse council that can best support its residents. Its grand modernisation vision aims to make a genuine difference to the working lives of its staff, and in doing so equip them to better serve the people that live and work in Harrow.

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ENVIRONMENT

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TECH FOR GOOD

PARTNERS FOR CHANGE

PARTNERS

for

CHANGE How Mars, Google, and AMV BBDO proved to a sceptical world that coral reefs can be restored AUTHOR: Cristina Marti

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ENVIRONMENT

W

hen Mars Petcare, Google, and AMV BBDO join forces, you’d expect great things. Together, they have used creativity and digital technology to raise awareness about an environmental issue and inspire others to join the movement to restore reefs at a large, ecologically relevant scale.

If we do nothing, scientists estimate that 90% of the global tropical reefs will disappear by 2043, affecting 500 million people and countless marine species.

Therefore, the project these three companies have been working on is changing 26

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the world. Working together to fulfil the long-term commitment by Mars Petcare’s Sheba brand to lead the largest-ever coral restoration programme, they committed to regrowing depleted areas of coral reef in Indonesia. Now, that work is being expanded around the world.

To make a high-risk project come together and the ambition to commit to ecological change at this scale over so many years is unusual, and it has taken close partnership work to ensure the change not only happened but was communicated globally as a message of hope for the rest of the world.

PARTNERS FOR CHANGE

In 2018 Bryan Ruiz, global client partner at Google, received an email from Laura Balfour, Senior Board Account Director on Mars Petcare at creative agency AMV BBDO, explaining the plan to restore a coral reef and asking what Google could do to help.

This was the start of a working partnership between AMV, Google, and Mars Petcare that continues today.

Under green ocean waters off the Indonesian coast, they’ve built a living, thriving coral reef that spells out a message, ‘H-O-P-E’.

Sheba Hope Reef, located in the Spermonde Archipelago, was built using innovative coated structures known as Reef Stars, showing that there can be man-made solutions to man-made problems. Because it’s visible from space, that means the reef appears on Google Maps, Google Earth and it is even viewable underwater in Google Street View.

Working at the speed of nature, allowing the coral time to grow at its own rate and happily flourish, the ‘Hope Grows’ campaign spread the message of hope. It went live in May 2021, surpassing all expectations with coverage including BBC and Sky News and achieving over 2.5 billion earned impressions.

The launch of Sheba Hope Reef marked a key milestone in the long-

It couldn’t just be a case of ‘stopping doing the bad’.

It had to be restoring the good as well” Laura Balfour

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ENVIRONMENT

Brands have a responsibility to make the world a better place” Sam West

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term commitment by the brand to lead the world’s largest coral restoration programme. By the end of 2029, the brand plans to restore more than 185,000 square metres - roughly the size of 148 Olympic Swimming Pools around the world.

The project is part of a new bold marketing mandate, Building Brands for Mutual Value, which is part of the Mars 2025 roadmap for sustainable growth.

The goal focuses on activating the power of Mars brands to make a meaningful and measurable difference. Mars Incorporated is committed to responsible, sustainable, and inclusive marketing, ensuring that every brand interaction creates shared value for the people, pets and partners and, ultimately, for the planet.

To promote the project and raise funds for the cause, in collaboration with Google, the brand has flipped the traditional brand YouTube relationship on its head. Instead of being an advertiser, the brand has become the content creator, with all ad revenue generated from its ‘Channel that Grows Coral’ donated to The Nature Conservancy for coral restoration. This simple, unique mechanic lets consumers become actively involved by watching and sharing the engaging content, growing hope for coral reefs from home. All the proceeds from this branded YouTube channel go toward funding sustainability efforts.

PARTNERS FOR CHANGE

“Momentum across the business is accelerating after a successful launch that saw over 2.5 billion earned impressions, a +267% increase in coral reef social conversations and positive sales lift results in multiple markets,” says Sam West, Global brand manager for Sheba. “Teams in Europe, Australia, Asia and the US are eagerly planning their next waves of activity with a focus on customer partnerships as globally we look to double down on providing consumers even more ways to get involved with our mission to plant 2 million coral colonies by 2029.”

“We never really stopped,” says Balfour.

“We started running this in 2019 and we are still going now. A new promotion has just gone live in Tesco in the UK.

So Bryan has never left my life at any point during this time, and he’s had two children in the period of the campaign.”

Pet food to ecological restoration When the team at AMV had a proposition from Sheba to work on fish sustainability, the agency soon realised that to look after the fish, you need to take care of their habitat. 50% of the world’s coral reefs were lost in the last 20 years and more than 90% are expected to die by 2050.

“It couldn’t just be a case of ‘stopping doing the bad’,’ says Balfour. “It had to be restoring the good as well.”

This work naturally takes years and requires a commitment from all parties.

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PARTNERS FOR CHANGE

organisations that does want to commit to ten, 20 and 30-year projects.” Balfour says. “Projects like this are a big financial commitment. Knowing that and knowing the bravery of our clients like Sam West and Denise Truelove at Sheba and Mars Petcare, I knew it was big and terrifying, but I knew they would love it.

I didn’t have any doubt that they would go for it having worked with them for five years prior to this project”.

West agrees with the need for all parties to understand that this kind of work is not just a passing campaign.

“The right partners believe in our mission and share our values,” she says. “They too understand that brands have a responsibility to make the world a better place and that, by creating mutual value, our brand will benefit in the long run.”

The strength of the partnership is something that has made this ambitious work possible and allowed it to grow and expand. “When this came our way, we were so interested in doing this project as part of our work together because everyone was so invested in it,” says Ruiz. “When people lean in and they’re so open and really want to collaborate, this is where you see the magic really happen. We were all just ‘in’, and that’s why it really worked.”

The level of trust between the partners has also been a benefit and one that

allows for very creative ideas to bloom, Balfour explains: “There is always a level of risk a creative idea may not work. In this instance, there was no guarantee that the Google Maps satellite would go over the reef in time, or that it wouldn’t be cloudy on that day! I think the beauty of what Bryan brought was that he could expand on the original idea. Plus, you must have the backing of a client like Mars who I know won’t fire me if the reef doesn’t show up on Google Maps because we’re all in this together. You can really only embark on a project this big if we all accept there is an element of risk.”

If you want to do something worldchanging, it’s not going to be easy, otherwise someone else would have done it before” Laura Balfour ISSUE 20

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ENVIRONMENT

“If you want to do something world-changing, it’s not going to be easy, otherwise someone else would have done it before,” says Balfour.

“Thankfully Mars understands that and is absolutely with you along the way, bringing the rigour of fully understanding and reducing any risk factors.

That’s the only way that it’s possible.”

Partnership, evolution and growth Over the past three years, the collaboration between AMV, Google, and Mars Petcare has positively evolved as the initial group has got to know each other.

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When it came to problem-solving the project hurdles were quite surprising.

“Mars Sustainable Solutions had been refining the reef star technique for over a decade so when it came down to it, planting the reef was relatively smooth and simple,” Balfour says. “It took only three days because that is the beauty of the technique - it is designed to enable reef builds at speed and scale. The hardest bit was then developing the no-dead-ends ecosystem to then take Hope Reef to the world.”

A world-changing project, a huge investment of time and money and a high level of risk mean that a partner-

PARTNERS FOR CHANGE

Bryan Ruiz

When people lean in and they’re so open and really want to collaborate, this is where you see the magic really happen. We were all just ‘in’, and that’s why it really worked”

ship must be solid to make great things happen. So, what have the leaders in this joint effort learned?

“Be open to flexibility,” says Ruiz.

“We have that goal in mind but our paths to get there may differ. All partners involved were open to that flexibility. That made the partnership so strong. We put our egos aside and just figured it out.”

Balfour agrees: “You have to like each other personally as well as professionally.

It’s going to get tough; you’ll be really tired at some point, and you need to take turns to pick each other up. You have to be able to rely on each other and trust each other absolutely because you’re putting yourself

out on a limb if you’re doing something new. You have to all want the same thing and be headed for that goal.”

“Admitting what you don’t know can be a superpower,” says West. “What makes the collaboration behind Hope Grows such a brilliant, continued success is that everyone shows up to the table in an honest, transparent, and open manner with an appetite to learn. Combine that with a clear mission which each team member felt personally committed to, and you have what I strongly believe to be one of the most incredibly cross-functional, cross-agency, global collaborations ever seen at Mars.”

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10 MINUTES WITH…

10 minutes with... an EV expert In this series, Tech For Good gets a 10-minute glimpse into new technologies. This month we sit down with Martin Kochman, VP, Head of Customers and Industries at Hitachi Vantara, to find out more about the world’s largest electric vehicle trial

INTERVIEW BY: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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MARTIN KOCHMAN

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FG: How important are electric vehicles in the race towards net-zero?

Martin: EVs alone will never be the universal, cure-all solution for reaching net-zero, but they do demonstrate what’s possible when it comes to tangible and sustainable low-carbon alternatives. With businesses buying 58% of all new vehicles in the UK, commercial vehicles play a significant role in determining the speed of the transition to low-carbon transport. The accelerated adoption of commercial EVs will save 2.7m tonnes of CO2 in the UK alone, which is equivalent to London’s entire bus fleet running for four years.

TFG: You are leading Hitachi Vantara’s Optimise Prime programme. What is the goal of the project?

Martin: Optimise Prime was launched in 2019 and is the world’s biggest electric

vehicle trial. It’s led by Hitachi Vantara and UK Power Networks, bringing together a consortium of leading power, technology, fleet, and transport companies to test and implement the best approaches to EV rollout for commercial enterprises. The goal of the project is to pinpoint and develop practical ways to overcome the challenges that prevent many of the UK’s biggest commercial vehicle operators from making the switch to EVs. The project uses large, real-time datasets and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to identify the demands of running electric fleets, with these insights then shared with others to enable them to develop the solutions that could cater to them. An example of this is for it to be possible to charge EVs efficiently outside the electricity network’s peak times ahead of the EU’s ban on petrol, diesel, and hybrid vehicles by 2035.

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TFG: Can you speak about some of the programme’s findings?

Martin: There are currently over 3,000 vehicles involved in the trial, with results set to be announced later this year. Our work to date suggests elective vehicles are unlikely to create a power-demand crisis but could reshape the load curve.

The most significant effect of this will be an increase in evening peak loads, this will be when people plug in their EVs when they return home from work. This load curve will lead to challenges at a local level as the regional spread of EVs will vary significantly.

Some potential solutions to these issues have been deciphered as providing better load management, including flexible tariffs, local energy storage solutions and centrally coordi-

nated charging management. In addition to peak-load increases, the highly volatile load profiles of public fastcharging stations will require additional system balancing.

TFG: What is the main challenge that comes with transitioning to EVs? Martin: Making the transition to new and clean forms of transportation requires a significant investment in time, skills, and funding to be a success.

To avoid any costly mistakes, accurate data is needed to demonstrate to teams exactly what’s needed to make clean forms of transportation - such as EVs - a reality. For example, the number and location of charging points in towns and cities has always been a pain point for organisations looking to electrify their vehicles. By tracking metrics like how often vehicles need charging and how long they remain charged for, town planners and fleet providers could gain the insights needed to deliver charging capabilities in the most beneficial way.

TFG: Why was it important that the dataset was made publicly available?

Martin: There’s no doubt that meeting environmental targets, such as the UK government’s commitment to end the sale of new petrol and

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diesel vehicles by 2030, will require a collaborative effort. This requires companies and organisations to work together to share the knowledge and tools needed to surface actionable insights.

Collaboration has been key in the ongoing success of Optimise Prime, with the backing of UK energy regulator Ofgem, UK Power Networks, Royal Mail, Centrica, Uber and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks being crucial in collecting and analysing data.

These collaborations allow the project to be scaled further, with the vast amount of detailed data allowing data scientists to assess where there are gaps in effectiveness, such as the various locations of charging points. This data is then shared back with the power and fleet providers, who will benefit from

lower-cost smart charging solutions by feeding into UK Power Network’s in-house distributed energy resource management platform.

TFG: Where do you see the EV sector going in the next five years?

Martin: While EVs have become increasingly mainstream over the past decade, I expect the fast-approaching deadline to stop the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2030 in the UK will impact fleet providers’ purchasing habits as they plan for the future. Even commercially, a greater awareness of the charging infrastructure required to make owning an EV a viable option for consumers is gaining traction. It’s an exciting time and the next five years could very well define the future of widespread EV rollout.

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THE Rightful AI The rise of artificial intelligence has set off ethical alarms.

Jan Kleijssen talks to Tech For Good about the Council of Europe’s mission to regulate the design and development of these technologies to protect human rights worldwide

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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alf a century before the European Union was born, there was already a Council of Europe. Set up in the wake of World War II, the Council’s mission is to promote peace, stability and the protection of human rights to over 830 million people. Now, it is adapting those rights to the digital era.

Instead of developing political declarations, the Council of Europe protects democracy and the rule of law through legal cooperation and the creation of more than 160 international agreements, treaties, and conventions. Some

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of them, such as the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights and the 1981 Data Protection Convention, have set the standards for human rights legislation worldwide. The latter is often considered the “grandmother of the GDPR” and it was the first step in the Council’s journey towards ensuring that the digital revolution doesn’t incur human rights violations.

As the Council’s Director of Information Society, Jan Kleijssen oversees standard-setting, monitoring and cooperation activities on a wide variety of issues, including freedom of

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expression, data protection, money laundering, cybercrime, and corruption.

Recently, he has set his sights on the new challenge that Europe faces: the ethical implications of the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI).

“The use of new technologies by governments really poses challenges to human rights,” Kleijssen says. “AI, which was a theoretical possibility for many years, has now become a practical reality.”

Kleijssen has recently participated in the Council of Europe’s Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI), which assessed the need for an international legal framework for the ethical development, design and application of AI. The committee included representatives from international organisations, national policy experts, IT companies, civil society and academia, who came together to examine AI governance and discuss issues such as the possible long-term societal effects of AI and the sustainable development of AI applications.

“Of course, artificial intelligence creates fantastic opportunities,” Kleijssen says. “But the hasty deployment of automated systems with blind faith in its objectivity and impartiality has been proven to lead to absolutely disastrous results. Governments can mitigate risks by creating regulations

and imposing standards to ensure that the use of the technology is as safe as can possibly be.”

The use of new technologies by governments really poses challenges to human rights” Jan Kleijssen

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In the past, the unregulated use of AI has had terrible consequences.

This was first seen in 2020, when the UK’s Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation used an algorithm to decide the grade of final-year high school students, who couldn’t take their A-level exams due to the COVID-related lockdowns.

What ensued was a grand scandal.

The system was soon proven to be highly biased, as it limited how many pupils could achieve certain grades and based its outputs on schools’ prior performance, downgrading around 40% of predicted results. In response, the UK government decided to void all

algorithm-generated results and replace them with teacher-assessed grades.

A second, more disastrous instance of the use of biased AI took place in Kleijssen’s homeland, the Netherlands, in February of 2021. There, the tax authorities developed an AI system to detect tax fraud and applied it to people who were receiving child and family benefits. The AI identified over 20,000 families that had allegedly defrauded the system, and as many as 10,000 families were forced to repay tens of thousands of euros at very short notice. When the algorithm was found to have been biased, the Dutch government was forced to resign.

Our governments have set less than two years for the negotiation of what would be the world’s first AI treaty”

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The cabinet’s resignation came after a damning parliamentary report that concluded that the system discriminated against people with non-Dutch family names, to the point of considering spelling mistakes in the tax allowance forms as deliberate attempts to commit tax fraud. However, when people tried to seek justice, the courts rejected the cases because they assumed that an automatic system couldn’t make mistakes. The name of the report, Unprecedented Injustice, reflected the scale of the scandal.

“The lack of AI governance was one of the factors that greatly contributed to this tragedy - because there’s no other word for it,” Kleijssen says.

“None of the boxes were ticked. The system was not robust; it had not been tested, there was no human oversight, and biases were not recognised. And it led to very dramatic results.

“It meant that a single mother with three children who received €1,000 per month had to pay back €100,000 within six months. Many lives were lost, marriages broke up and more than 1,000 children were forcefully taken away and placed in care because the parents were considered to have criminally defrauded the welfare state. It was a disaster.”

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the technology. Now, two years after CAHAI’s first meeting, the committee has supported this belief by expressing the need for a legally-binding framework on the use of AI and outlining some of the elements that would be vital to its success.

Instead of laying down detailed technical parameters for the design, development and application of AI systems, the new treaty would establish certain basic principles that would regulate the use of these systems in accordance with human rights regulations. To achieve 44

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this, CAHAI proposed establishing a methodology for risk classification of AI systems including a number of categories such as “low risk”, “high risk”, or “unacceptable risk”. These laws should apply to the development, design, and application of AI systems both by public and private actors and be open to accession by non-member states. The goal is for this legislation to transcend Europe, and become a global standard.

“Our governments are quite ambitious, and have set less than two years for the negotiation of what would be the world’s first AI treaty,” Kleijssen says. “Governments will now start negotiating, and every word and every comma will be discussed because a lot of this will be binding. We sincerely hope that our observer states will actively continue to participate.”

Although the Council is a European organisation, its legislation has been adopted by non-members or ‘observer states’, namely Canada, the Holy See, Japan, Mexico, and the US. The government of Israel requested to be included in the discussions regarding a new law against cybercrime. Moreover, the Council has also established a framework where non-governmental organisations such as non-profits and private companies can sit at the table and make their positions known.

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Ethical standards are important, but they’re not themselves sufficient”

Although this multi-stakeholder approach is very valuable to ensure all sectors of society are committed to developing ethical technologies, it also creates challenging situations when faced with opposing interests.

“In most of our member states, there was not yet - and there still isn’t - a governance position on AI issues,” Kleijssen says. “Even within the same country, AI is often delivered by a variety of ministries who have competing agendas. Whereas the Justice ministries lean very much towards setting common rules, a number of ministries of Economic Affairs were initially afraid that this would hamper innovation in the race with the US and China.”

However, regulations don’t necessarily hold back innovation. Highly regulated industries such as the medical and financial sectors have flourished in Europe despite very tight restrictions, with the former being able to develop one of the main vaccines against COVID-19 in record time. Eventually, the members of CAHAI were able to recognise this and identify the need to impose one common, legally binding framework for the use of AI across Europe - and hopefully the world.

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Whatever technology you use, you cannot violate human rights” Kleijssen, this isn’t enough. Ethical standards vary widely from company to company and country to country and organisations have no legal obligation to adhere to them.

“Ethical standards draw the attention to important principles, but they’re just principles,” Kleijssen says. “If you and I have a problem, we cannot go to court and invoke an ethical standard, because it cannot apply. It’s absolutely not a remedy. It doesn’t put an obligation on governments. In the case of the Netherlands, the tax authorities perhaps had an ethical standard, but since they were not binding, they could not be enforced by the courts and individual citizens had nothing to rely on.

“Ethical frameworks are useful and we take inspiration from when we try to identify what should be regulated by law. They are important, but they’re not themselves sufficient.”

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Although AI is its most recent focus, the Council of Europe is no stranger to turning ethical standards into law.

Recently, Kleijssen participated in the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Cybercrime Convention, the first international treaty on crimes committed via the Internet and other computer networks. The document deals with very varied digital crimes, including copyright infringements, computer-related fraud, child pornography and violations of network security.

Today, the Convention is still the world’s only legal instrument to fight against cybercrime, and it has evolved to keep

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up with technological advances.

“These treaties are living instruments, they’re not set in stone,” Kleijssen says.

“Last year, the Council obtained an agreement from all 66 countries which was not easy - and the European Union on a new protocol to the Cybercrime Convention.

“The traditional way of cooperation between governments or against crime is what is called a ‘mutual legal assistance agreement’, which takes six months. In the good old days, this was a reasonable time. But now, of course, everything’s in the cloud, and six months is a ridiculously long time to

find evidence because, by the time the request reaches the other country, the evidence has already been transferred or deleted. As a result, impunity at the moment is extremely wide when it comes to cybercrime.”

Enter the new protocol. This legislation makes it possible for governments to directly address private companies in advance so that they can react quickly when a crime has been committed and bypass the current cumbersome bureaucracy. This at the moment is only possible in emergency situations such as the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan in France. In those cases, ISSUE 20

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when lives were on the line, Microsoft reacted immediately to help identify and track down the perpetrators.

“At the moment, that is an exceptional situation, but the idea is for this collaboration to become much more generalised,” Kleijssen says.

As was the case with the Cybercrime Convention, any treaties that regulate new technologies such as AI will have to be revisited periodically and adapted to the new threats that will arise. Although public policy can only follow innovation, this surge of concern regarding the ethical implications of digital tools might drive tech firms to ensure that they adopt a framework of ‘privacy by design’ and ensure that the right safeguards are in place from the very start.

After AI, what comes next? Kleijssen believes that Council will sit down and discuss the metaverse.

“I’ve already launched within the Council of Europe a proposal that we start looking very seriously at the metaverse,” Kleijssen says. “This space will have fantastic opportunities,

for instance in online education, but I think - it’s an educated guess - that organised crime will very quickly install itself in the metaverse. Issues like child abuse, child pornography, bullying and violence against women will also happen in the metaverse.

“Whatever technology you use, you cannot violate human rights. It’s therefore very important to not wait until this technology has been rolled out and is used by millions of people worldwide.

I would very strongly plead to human rights and the rule of law to be included by design, from the very outset. I’m under no illusion that we will be able to stop every abuse, but we can certainly mitigate it and provide remedies when things go wrong.”

Human rights have not changed in the digital age. The right to privacy, the right to be protected against arbitrary government actions and the right to be treated without discrimination, among others, are more relevant than they have ever been, albeit being implemented in a different way. As society moves towards a more digitally-enhanced future, it’s governments’ responsibility to ensure that human rights are respected both on and offline.

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EXPERT INSIGHT

EXPERT INSIGHT In every issue of Tech For Good we speak to experts leaders in their field. This month we get the expert insight from Virgin Media O2, HPE and Infosys

FEATURING VIRGIN MEDIA O2 David Owens Head of Technical Trials

HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE Janice Zdankus Vice President of Innovation for Social Impact

INFOSYS Mohit Joshi President

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Taking flight

David Owens, Head of Technical Trials, Virgin Media O2, on how drones are propelling innovation in healthcare and the emergency services

D

rones are becoming more commonplace in society. People often think of these flying tools as toys but drones have already played a significant role in many areas including filming, delivery, surveillance, and even war. However, their societal potential is far wider. Harnessing the possibilities of drone technology for good can allow us to find solutions to many daily challenges and even help save lives.

At Virgin Media O2, we’re supercharging innovation in connected drones through our 5G network, developing solutions that support the healthcare and emergency services industries. Working with forward-thinking partners that hold a shared vision for the future of technology that benefits society, our tests and trials are focused on opening up the possibilities of drones and how they can be deployed to help people in critical situations and assist the NHS. In emergency treatment, time can be critical As the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic persist, the NHS remains under pressure, with resources squeezed

and ambulance wait times stretched. A connected drone delivery network could help the service by enabling faster and cleaner deliveries, bypassing traffic for the likes of blood, medicines, medical equipment and organs, ultimately helping to save lives. This was the case for a man in Sweden, whose life was saved by a defibrillator delivered via drone three minutes after he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest. The speed of the defibrillator’s arrival meant that a vital resuscitation could be performed before the ambulance arrived at the scene.

Working with drone logistics operator Skyfarer, along with Cranfield University, Phoenix Wings and unified traffic management solutions provider Altitude Angel, Virgin Media O2 has been able to power the first medical drone delivery network trial in England. The trial has shown that the ability to relay real-time data over Virgin Media O2’s network can speed up patient response times and make drone delivery of blood for lifesaving transfusions a reality. The infrastructure we’re building will provide a faster, greener form of medical transport, with no impact on road congestion or fossil ISSUE 20

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fuel emissions. On top of this, the technology has the potential to expand logistical developments, upskill workers and innovate a new sector.

Racing to reach missing persons The emergency services are called out when someone goes missing or is injured in remote, hard-to-reach locations. In these instances, helicopters can sometimes be deployed as part of the search party, using significant resources.

In September 2021, working with Swiss drone company Fotokite, Virgin Media O2 conducted a first-of-its-kind trial in the UK, testing a 5G-enabled tethered drone in a simulated rescue mission. The interactive drone provides emergency services and public safety teams with accessible and mission-critical situational awareness tools. With a quick set-up time of two minutes, no time is lost in conducting the situational analysis of a scene, potentially saving lives. The tethered drone can be positioned up to 45 metres above a situation and, using 5G technology, send real-time data to first responders on the ground and teams in other locations such as local hospitals, to immediately assess what’s happened. Using thermal imaging capabilities to highlight where people are is a particularly useful tool in dark and densely forested areas, and this type of response also has signifi52

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cant green benefits too, as the drone is lightweight and powered by electricity.

The future is smart, connected healthcare The faster, more reliable connectivity speeds that 5G offers, along with its enhanced energy efficiencies and security mean that this technology will help us in the future, revolutionising everything around us - from how traffic flows on our roads, to the way we receive healthcare. The positive impact that 5G delivers can enable us to create a smarter, safer, and more sustainable future.

At Virgin Media O2, our Test and Trials programme helps shine a spotlight on the capabilities of 5G innovation, focusing on tangible projects that will benefit the wider society. Over the past couple of years, we’ve trialled several services that put our connectivity potential into action, and we have shown that these applications have the power to revolutionise emergency service rescue and patient care. We are relentlessly exploring and developing 5G-enabled services that will make real differences to the public, from smart cities to connected vehicles. By applying the capabilities of our network to everyday use cases, there is an opportunity to demystify 5G and show how the technology can improve people’s lives now and in the future.

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Tackling the global food crisis Janice Zdankus, Vice President of Innovation for Social Impact, HPE, on how feeding the world will require a collective effort A recent letter to the Financial Times by Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, the Chief Executive of the charity organisation Oxfam, resonated with me on various levels. In the letter, he points out that net-zero targets often “rely implicitly on tree-planting and other land-hungry initiatives, instead of actually cutting emissions” and thereby risk “driving up food prices and increasing hunger”.

Sriskandarajah emphasises that companies need to “take bold action to cut carbon emissions much closer to home.”

While he uses the oil and gas industry as an example, it is clear that the tech industry too, being hugely dependent on a wide variety of resources, has to take responsibility for its share. However, the beauty of technological developments is that they also have great potential to be the solution to various environmental issues.

On the one hand, we see increasing efforts throughout the industry to develop and provide sustainable IT solutions, following different approaches and models. For HPE, this includes a strong design focus on energy efficiency, longevity, and recyclability. On the other hand, technology is leveraged to tackle environmental and societal challenges. One great example of this is big data processing.

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efforts for a food secure future. This was another point that made Mr Sriskandarajah’s letter so relatable, as his key critique focussed on the longterm impact of carbon offsets on the global food crisis.

By 2030, the global population is predicted to reach between 8.5 billion and 9.8 billion, necessitating 70% more food than is currently consumed.

This means that not only will we need to cut carbon emissions, but also find solutions to solve the food crisis without further cutting into both acreage and forests, literally. CGIAR, a global partnership of 15 non-profit agricultural research institutions working in more than 100 countries, is doing research into virtually every aspect of food security to develop these solutions.

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performance, economic activities, and surveys to generate a comprehensive picture of areas of high food production, so-called food baskets, and influencing factors. One of these factors, which was the focus for the project between CGIAR and HPE, is the COVID-19 pandemic. During the last two years we saw disruption throughout all sectors worldwide, and although the impacts on the food crisis were apparent, the details on the how and why were impossible to pinpoint in all their different shapes and forms.

The COVID effects One aspect CGIAR was particularly interested in was the effects of COVID lockdowns on emissions. The organisation had several projects running but didn’t possess the computing power to manage calculating analytics

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across 250 cities. Although CGIAR has high-performance computing clusters at several of its centres, the need for this type of timely, localised information and analysis was beyond its existing capabilities. The emissions analysis on just a single point on the earth would have taken up to five hours to run using their existing technology.

To support the research, HPE provided CGIAR with access to the HPE Memory-Driven Computing Sandbox. Specifically designed for big data processing, it allowed the research group to access, compile and analyse huge, diverse datasets simultaneously, without affecting the required timeliness. This included compiling lockdown data, satellite records, emissions signatures, and other information. This data was uploaded to the Sandbox to train a model for recognising greenhouse gas, particularly nitrous oxide, from space.

Now fitted with the capabilities to run multiple analyses across multiple points, CGIAR can build high-frequency views of food systems that link together crop modelling, survey data, and overall economic activity. As researchers monitor emissions of key locations across India and East Africa, they obtain critical context that could signal changes in economic activity. These insights allow them to understand how food security challenges are developing and to com-

pare that picture with crop and survey data to determine how the overall food supply will be impacted.

The future of food security In the long run, the goal is to evaluate the effects of climate change on the future of food security. With the help of the Memory-Driven Computing Sandbox, the CGIAR is building models to predict droughts, floods, cyclones, and other climate-related natural disasters. By sharing its findings with farmers, policymakers, and food relief organisations, CGIAR will be able to help to prepare for these shock events to support a collective response and reduce the impact on the food system.

Mr Sriskandarajah’s letter reminded me once again that the intertwined problems of climate change, carbon emissions and the global food crisis are extremely complex. It is going to take a coalition of people and technology, including governments, policymakers, private industry, NGOs, and farmers, to make a significant impact.

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Digital learning Mohit Joshi, President at Infosys, on how the metaverse will fuel enhanced educational opportunities The pandemic forced all of us to use technology in ways we had not anticipated, to carry on working and socialising despite lockdowns around the world.

Education is no different: schools and universities suddenly found themselves having to deliver lectures and lessons via video platforms while managing marking and administrative tasks collaboratively and supporting parents of younger children who were pitched into managing their children’s school activities.

Shared experiences across borders This shared experience has focused minds on what the next iteration of this collaborative tech could deliver. Imagine, for example, rather than a grid of young faces all watching a teacher talking at them about, say, Henry VIII and his six wives, the teachers takes them into a 3D immersive representation of life in Tudor palaces. In this virtual space, children could see the surroundings the king and his wives and children lived in, and develop a vivid understanding of the times.

The vision of the metaverse is also that it will let people learn across geographical boundaries. Kwang Hyung 56

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Lee of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology noted that “the entire world has effectively taken part in an educational experiment” during the pandemic, adding that its campus in Kenya, due to open in 2023, will use a blended approach that will reduce the need for students and staff to commute from Nairobi to the campus.

Meanwhile, Infosys is already thinking about the next generation of learning tools, from the Infosys Foundation USA, which supports expanding computer science and maker education to teachers and students across the USA, to Infosys Wingspan, a platform that helps enterprises curate learning for their staff.

Among the tools of the future are virtual environments that will help students train for real-world situations by simulating them, providing a more realistic arena for learning and assessment than traditional lectures and exams.

Virtual simulations - which can be used in any scenario, from planning for business emergencies for MBA students to teaching medical students to carry out invasive procedures - can provide safe spaces for students to work through

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options and make mistakes, and see the outcome of those errors without causing any harm in the real world.

Real-world concerns in the metaverse However, there are a number of concerns about using the metaverse for educational purposes, of which the most pressing is how to safeguard young, vulnerable users.

If we think of the metaverse, not as one huge space but a collection of virtual spaces built and run by many different organisations from gaming worlds to museums and schools, it immediately becomes clear that there won’t be a single overarching entity managing content moderation and

safeguarding. Critics point to problems already hugely apparent in existing virtual spaces aimed at children, such as Habbo Hotel, which was revealed in 2012 to be awash with predators.

More current are the ongoing concerns about the difficulty of content moderation on social platforms, from Facebook to Instagram and TikTok. Real-world concerns in higher education such as inappropriate relationships between students and educators, abuse of power, and freedom of speech will not go away in the metaverse, and if anything, will require even closer oversight as educators, students, parents, and children learn to navigate the immersive world.

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Adults already struggle to manage their children’s interactions online. Tech providers are responding in a piecemeal way, with tools ranging from parental control software, child accounts managed by an adult, and using content filtering solutions such as OpenDNS’s infrastructure. Meanwhile, regulators are looking at options that range from the hard to implement, such as the UK’s Online Safety Bill and its proposals to require age verification across a range of social platforms, to the overbearing and impractical, such as moves by Australia to require tech companies to give law enforcement access to encrypted messages. These are hard problems that are only going to become more complex in a series of immersive spaces that work across geographical boundaries provided by a huge range of entities.

The vision of an educational metaverse also relies on infrastructure and making sure its would-be participants have access to the devices and bandwidth needed to fully participate. Writing in TES Magazine, for example, James O’Malley sets out the realities of trying to do online education in the UK when rural broadband provision means it can take more than four hours to download a 1GB file.

The promise of safe, immersive, and vibrant spaces The metaverse can and will offer huge

opportunities to make education at all levels engaging, exciting, and collaborative. Educators will be able to devise immersive experiences that leverage institutions beyond the classroom, from museums to theatres and historic spaces, that students can participate in regardless of where they are so that they can learn skills in a safe, collaborative space.

The next generation of learning will require entire ecosystems to come together, from governments and institutions to enterprises and technology partners.

It will be a huge leap forward from the static grid of faces online learning had to become during the pandemic. However, it will depend on infrastructure, access to technology and a willingness to tackle some of the big challenges inherent in bringing young people into these spaces. If those are addressed thoughtfully, the next generation of students will benefit from a wonderfully rich experience.

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GOOD OR BAD?

GOOD OR

BAD? Great power comes with great responsibility, and that is particularly true of new technologies. Each month, Tech For Good discusses the potential benefits and dangers of technological advances that are coming to market. This month we ask: Are brain-computer interfaces ethical?

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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F

rom walking sticks to glasses, humans have always worn technology to improve their quality of life. Every day, at least 400,000 cochlear implants are given to children who suffer from hearing loss.

Now, scientists are planning to take this concept to the next level by implanting devices into people’s brains.

The aim of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) is to transform brain signals into commands. These can later be sent to any type of device to initiate an action, from cars to prosthetics. The possibilities are endless. In the future, BCIs could replace or restore useful functions for people with neuromuscular disorders as well as support the work of pilots, surgeons, and other highly skilled professionals. In addition, they could improve rehabilitation for people with strokes or head traumas, and they have even been considered as possible forms of treatment for people suffering from mental illnesses such as anxiety or depression.

BCIs might soon be our new normal.

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GOOD? and Facebook is reportedly already working on a 100-words-per-minute brain-typing interface. Given the pace of medical innovation brought forth by the pandemic, the arrival of BCIs is not a question of whether, but when.

What the expert says: “ BCI technology has already shown promising results in providing assistance in both cognitive and physical support and rehabilitation, and we look forward to future innovation in this important area of research that affects all of us eventually” Abdelkader Nasreddine Belkacem, Assistant Professor, United Arab Emirates University

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or as much good as they can bring, BCIs also have the potential for great dangers.

As a very new area of science, the implications of this technology and its possible side effects are still largely unknown. The most obvious risks are thoses that come with any highly invasive surgery. With possible consequences ranging from brain haemorrhage to immune reactions or infections, most clinicians deem the procedure too risky for healthy individuals to be exposed to.

Moreover, BCIs might not even work at all. Experts believe that around 15-30% of individuals are inherently not able to produce brain signals robust enough to operate one of these devices.

Nonetheless, the most pressing concerns regarding BCIs are not physical, but ethical. The unlimited access to people’s thoughts, moods and motivations that this technology would grant private companies an indiscriminate power that could easily lead to human rights abuses. And what would happen if BCIs were not only able to listen, but also control the brain? As the brain is the organ that controls one’s sense of self, any alterations on it could

BAD?

impact people’s personalities. If a person wearing a BCI device executes a harmful action, even though the user would have normally not acted in this way alone, who would be held responsible? The best way to ensure that such a situation never occurs is for these technologies to stay in the realm of science fiction, where no lives can be lost.

What the expert says: “ People are only going to be amenable to the idea [of an implant] if they have a very serious medical condition they might get help with. Most healthy individuals are uncomfortable with the idea of having a doctor crack open their skull” Blake Richards, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto

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ASHISH PRASHAR

A SECOND

CHANCE TO SHINE

In his journey from youth offender to press secretary for Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, Ashish Prashar is living proof that one’s past doesn’t have to define their future. Sharing his life experience, the now R/GA Global Chief Marketing Officer talks to Tech For Good about how open hiring practices can help companies unlock a new talent pool

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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W

hat does it take to be a leader? Upon meeting Ashish Prashar, the answer seems to be hard work, determination, and the right amount of luck. After all, few could have guessed that the current Global Chief Marketing Officer at R/GA who has worked for Tony Blair, Barack Obama, and Boris Johnson was, once upon a time, a youth offender.

“It’s no secret that I am formerly incarcerated,” Prashar says. “My life story has been quite radical, from being incarcerated to becoming a reporter, and then a press secretary for leading political figures like, sadly, Boris Johnson. It’s not been a typical path to becoming a CMO. But, predominantly, my work has always been storytelling, 66

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and now I am bringing that energy to the corporate world.”

Currently, 70 million Americans have a criminal record, roughly the same number as the amount of US citizens that have completed a college degree.

In the UK, there are currently about 560 children in police custody, 30% of which are from ethnic minorities - despite these ethnicities only making up 14% of the country’s population - according to data published by the Ministry of Justice. Prashar was once one of them, and he is now working to ensure that the tech sector gives the new generations the opportunities he was lucky enough to receive.

At the age of 17, Prashar was sentenced to a year in prison for

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conspiracy to steal from a London department store. It was his first offence and he pleaded guilty to the charge. As a result, Prashar was sent to Feltham, a youth offenders facility known for its year-on-year rises in the level of violence against children and staff. If he was able to study and move on from that lifestyle, he says, it’s because of the support his family provided him with.

“My aunt basically transformed my life,” Prashar says. “She fought the Justice Secretary to make sure I could take my A-levels in prison. She fought the warden to make sure to get the books because, even when I was granted permission to take my-A levels, the prison wouldn’t let me have books.

And then she got me out after a short amount of time.”

But how does youth conviction lead to a successful career in digital marketing?

For Prashar, it was through the press.

A criminal record of any kind is often associated with higher unemployment rates. Currently, 64% of unemployed Americans in their 30s have been arrested, and 46% have a criminal conviction, according to RAND Corporation. For this reason, Prashar feels lucky to have met The Sun’s Andy Coulson in a book presentation shortly after his release. In that meeting, he was granted a second chance.

My life story has been quite radical, from being incarcerated to becoming a reporter, and then a press secretary for leading political figures. It’s not been a typical path to becoming a CMO” Ashish Prashar

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“I was thrown in front of him,” Prashar says. “He didn’t ask what I did. He just wanted to know who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. He saw I had the energy to be part of his team.

“I ended up being a press officer for people I didn’t agree with but, you have to understand, I had a criminal record.

Andy was someone that didn’t care I had a record, someone who actually cared about my life. And then, I eventually acquired enough privilege to work for people I actually wanted to work for.”

Since then, Prashar has had a very successful career in the political sphere. After working as a reporter for The Sun he began handling the communications for the UK’s Conservative Party, eventually becoming press secretary to the former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Disenchanted

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with his birth country’s political climate, Prashar moved across the Atlantic, joining Barack Obama’s first presidential run and more recently worked with the Democrats to mobilise the vote for President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.

Although he still considers himself more a storyteller than a marketeer, Prashar has now shifted his focus to the corporate world and is helping private organisations promote more human-centric marketing campaigns and ways of working. For him, this starts with the establishment of hiring practices that look at people’s potential instead of their past.

“Most people who leave prison just want to get on with their lives,” he says.

“I just wanted to have a normal career. It was only between 2010 and 2012 that I felt this urge to do something to support formerly incarcerated people.

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If we are judging people on things like having a record, we are losing our society as we speak.

Building a more human workforce means accepting individuals for who they are as a person: their past, present and potential future” “The change came when I went on a trip to Sierra Leone with Tony Blair. I was there to help build the healthcare programme and I got to see reconciliation council meetings, where former child soldiers would be re-healed into society. I saw a child sitting in front of two adults - he had taken the life of their children, and they adopted him. They said it was because they didn’t want any more children to be lost to a war

that ended 10 years ago. It was one of many stories, but it stuck out to me the most because it focused on healing, not punishment.”

When compared to the rehabilitation of child soldiers, incorporating youth offenders into the workforce might seem a simplertask, but it’s by no means an insignificant one.

Prison reform and new hiring practices are fundamental for the future of business in the United States, and globally. In the midst of a global talent shortage, a third of the country’s population has a criminal record. A new Korn Ferry report finds that by 2030, more than 85 million jobs could go unfilled, resulting in a loss of $8.5 trillion in unrealised annual revenues. Therefore, rehabilitation and training programmes would see the growth of both the youth and the country as a whole.

In 2012, Prashar chaired the former Mayor of London’s Mentoring Initiative to help formerly incarcerated young people re-enter society. It didn’t meet much success, but that didn’t stop his momentum. Now, as Global Chief Marketing Officer at R/GA, Prashar is incorporating more inclusive hiring practices into the company, and inviting others to follow his lead.

“The UK is building more prisons in a pandemic,” Prashar says. “To me, that seems like a colossal waste of money.

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If we are judging people on things like having a record, we are losing our society as we speak. Building a more human workforce means accepting individuals for who they are as a person: their past, present and potential future.

We need to create an environment where more people can tell a story like mine and don’t feel judged.

“At the moment, we’re wasting potential that could be curing deadly viruses or solving your business’s coding problems.

One individual can transform the world around them. And when you think that one-third of America is impacted by this to some degree, that means you’re holding your whole country back.”

The world is changing and so are conversations about prison reform and hiring practices, particularly in the US. At all levels, companies across the

country are increasingly concerned about the inclusivity of their workplaces and working towards creating more equitable and accessible environments.

With this goal in mind, Prashar has been working with organisations such as Verizon and JPMorgan Chase to pass a Clean Slate law. This piece of legislation would automatically clear a person’s conviction record once they become eligible, opening access to jobs and increasing their potential earnings by about 20%.

“My good fortune is, sadly, incredibly rare,” Prashar says. “A conviction’s enduring collateral damage can be wide-ranging, permanently barring individuals from basic needs like employment and housing. We need to make sure no sentence is a life sentence in or out of prison.”

Designing a more human future at R/GA had to start with our people. I believe anywhere there are people, there is power. I don’t think there’s a way to escape talking about or considering politics or social justice in most business decisions anymore” 70

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In addition to changing government policy, private companies are also taking steps to make a change, such as the creation of the Second Chance Business Coalition, which allows businesses to develop and test new approaches to help support the hiring and advancement of people with criminal backgrounds. Accenture, CVS, Eaton, General Motors, McDonald’s, Microsoft, and Walmart are all part of this organisation, and its membership keeps growing as the corporate world defines its new normal.

Prashar and R/GA are leading the way themselves when it comes to open hiring. The company is collaborating with expert organisations, such

as Exodus Transitional Community and Getting Out and Staying Out - of which Prashar is a board member - to design the infrastructure to support a programme aimed at recruiting, developing, and promoting formerly incarcerated people.

In Prashar’s view, it’s not enough to “ban the box” that asks people about their criminal convictions. In order to truly support the formerly incarcerated youth, companies would need to target and train them specifically.

“Designing a more human future at R/GA had to start with our people,” he says. “I believe anywhere there are people, there is power. I don’t think there’s a way to escape talking about or ISSUE 20

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considering politics or social justice in most business decisions anymore.

“It’s not enough to meet a numbers goal. We have a responsibility as individuals to use our privilege, whatever that might be, to advocate for people who are actively disenfranchised. We need to give formerly incarcerated people the space to thrive, the opportunity to create, and the tools to develop their potential. This is not preferential treatment; it’s equal treatment through the elimination of unnecessary systemic barriers. It’s equity.”

In this journey to a more equitable society, technology has already become a fundamental driver.

R/GA itself has already achieved great success in leveraging technology to create social good with its Welcome.US project. After the US exit of Afghanistan, thousands of people needed asylum 72

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in the US, but they didn’t know how to request it. In addition, communities all across the country were coming together to help, but they needed a way to connect with the newly arrived refugees. In collaboration with the US State Department, leading refugee resettlement organisations, brand partners like Airbnb, and creative leaders, R/GA helped design and build an engaging web experience that made it easy to help refugees resettle, in just three weeks.

“It isn’t often you get asked to serve in corporate America,” Prashar says. “It was a privilege to do that.”

Technology has great potential for good, but if left unchecked, it can also widen inequalities by promoting biases towards women and people of colour.

Recently, a Wiley report found that 68% of business leaders report a lack

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of diversity in their tech workforce.

Although the transformation of business practices is a fundamental step to changing this, Prashar believes that it is these business leaders’ responsibility to ensure that they are taking the steps necessary to diversify their workforces and drive change. The alternative can lead to terrible consequences.

“When you have bad leaders, the damage you do is irreparable,” Prashar says. “If you have bad leadership, people will not stay, people will not be loyal, people will not do their best work for you. Why should anyone listen to the government if the Prime Minister doesn’t follow its rules? As a former press Secretary for Johnson, I think he should resign.”

A leader’s success is dependent on that of their team. By letting go of prejudices, organisations can focus on what

an applicant can bring to a company; their drive and potential, rather than their past. This is more important than ever in the technology world, where a lack of diversity in design teams has led to faulty facial recognition software and biased hiring algorithms.

People are a company’s most important asset. In order to address the talent shortage and fully take advantage of the potential that formerly incarcerated people have, organisations need to change their hiring practices to avoid holding onto applicants’ past. And, eventually, society might also let go of the prison system as a whole.

“The trauma that the prison industry inflicts, the wealth it extracts, and the lives it destroys devalue our social fabric and hurt us all,” Prashar says.

“We need to move away from a punitive punishment culture that is inadequate.

There are other ways to solve crime in a community like they did in Sierra Leone.

We lock our children up and expect better.

They look at me and say: ‘Prison helped you’. Prison didn’t help me. People helped me; people changed my life.”

It only took someone willing to give Prashar an opportunity to completely change his life. Every day, there are many more Prashars able to make a difference in the industry, if employers are brave enough to give them a second chance.

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