Sophie Taylor

Sophie is a Senior Digital Ethics and Innovation Consultant at Sopra Steria. As a founding member of the company’s Digital Ethics practice, she has pioneered the Digital Ethics agenda to help customers engage with the ethical risks and opportunities that arise from digital technology. Sophie draws on her background in the social sciences to explore areas such as bias, inclusion, privacy, safety and transparency. She leads the team’s User Research stream, drawing on participatory research methods to include diverse groups of users in the development of Digital Ethics strategies and roadmaps.

Backed by research and industry-recognised standards, Sopra Steria’s Digital Ethics team works with organisations to highlight the ethical challenges facing their digital strategies, programmes or projects. Our work focuses on uncovering the practical changes that organisations can make to maximise the positive impact of their technologies. Our comprehensive understanding of technology, combined with our leadership in managing our business for economic, social and environmental sustainability, make us a natural partner to take action on Digital Ethics issues. We move the discussion from the philosophical to the practical, collaborating with a range of stakeholders and industry groups to shape a better future, while helping organizations navigate the challenges of Digital Ethics today, leading to better business outcomes now.

Data ethics in practice: Building trust between a council and its residents

When Harrow Council wanted to start using citizen data to improve their digital services, council leaders recognised that they were heading towards the unfamiliar territory of Data Ethics. For a long time, the conversation about Data Ethics has been abstract and academic, and transforming this into practice was a challenge the Council wanted to tackle. To do so, they partnered with Digital Ethics experts at Sopra Steria to understand how to make practical changes in the way they design, develop and use technology, with a focus on building trust with citizens.

We embarked on a 10-week project with the Council, bringing together the perspectives of staff, local residents, and best practice in Data Ethics. Over the 10 weeks, we ran a series of collaborative workshops, undertook primary research, and delved into an analysis of Harrow Council’s technology, data use and governance. This enabled us to co-create a Data Ethics strategy and roadmap which tied to existing processes within the Council, ensuring our recommendations would be easily adopted across the organisation. The work has already been transformative for the way Harrow embraces Data Ethics, with changes to the organisation’s policies, methods of engaging with citizens, and digital services improved as a result of the project.

This session will explore how using established frameworks to transform theory into practical action enables teams to take tangible steps towards delivering truly responsible technology.