Data Bites: the brilliant buffet of public sector data returns

I’m delighted to announce that Data Bites has a new home with Think Digital Partners and State of the Future. We’ll be running events showcasing the best of public sector data work on Wednesdays 21 October, 11 November and 2 December (after Think AI for Government, Think Innovation for Government and Think Data for Government, respectively). All at One Great George Street, and all at the (earlier!) start time of 5.30pm.

For those of you who’ve been before, that’s (hopefully) welcome news after a brief hiatus.

For the uninitiated, let me explain…

A brief history of Data Bites

I spent many years at the Institute for Government trying to make sense and pretty charts of government data. We spent a lot of time publicly criticising government for the quality of the data it published, and not using data as well as it should for making policies, making decisions and making public services work. But this was the 2010s – there were a lot of people inside the public sector trying to change that. They were thinking big thoughts and doing great work. They were trying to change things for the better.

I was sometimes lucky enough to go to internal government events – show and tells, and similar – where people would show off what they were doing. Pithy presentations, entertaining slides, energising Q&As. The problem, as ever, was that this work wasn’t getting shared beyond the usual silos – within central government, between different levels of government – when it could make a real difference. Perhaps we could do something about that?

The byte is a unit of information. It consists of eight bits. I was desperately looking for a gimmick to brand a new event series, based on bite-sized presentations, showing off good government data work. And out of that homophonic serendipity, Data Bites was born: an event based around eight-minute presentations. There are eight bits in a byte, hence eight minutes in a Data Bite.

Numerical format

The format remains unchanged from our first event back in April 2019. After eight minutes of irreverent introduction from me, trying to be funny with charts and any data-related events in the news, four presenters each get eight minutes to present, followed by eight minutes of questions from the audience. That’s it. It’s quickfire, it’s full of insights, and it’s fun. It highlights good work – it shows non-data people what better data means in practice – and it brings the various ‘data’ communities in and around government, from service delivery to stats, together.

That first event featured the ONS Data Science Campus, Ofgem, Vocalink (a Mastercard company) and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – MHCLG, as was and is again (or MoHoCoLoGo, a joke which somehow made it from the Data Bites stage to the House of Lords). We’ve had over 200 speakers from dozens of public sector (and other) organisations since – from national statisticians and government chief data officers, to data scientists and data engineers deep in the details, to Ben Goldacre. We’ve had projects and perspectives galore – from planning data, to how schoolchildren feel about AI, to tracking waste, to data matching tools, to the Census, to switching Brexit legislation on and off, to a firework failing to go off on stage and a sea shanty about the National Data Strategy. And much, much more.

A new home

There were 49 Data Bites events at the Institute for Government between 2019 and 2024 – you can watch all of them here. There were eleven at Public Digital, 2024 to 2025 – you can find those here.

I’m thrilled to be bringing Data Bites back with the team at Think Digital Partners – please join us for the events this autumn! If you’re in the public sector and have something to fill eight minutes with, get in touch; if you’re in the private sector and have something to talk about, please do considering sponsoring an event.

Data Bites is a delectable feast of good data work – a tasting menu of innovative treats. There’ll always be a dish on the menu you want to try, others you wouldn’t otherwise have tasted, and the courses come quickly. Stay for the drinks afterwards. We look forward to you dining with us.

“Think Digital Partners is so pleased to be working with Gavin and State of the Future on relaunch of the Data Bites series,” said Think Digital Partners’ founder, Matt Stanley.

“We think the discussions and topics are a perfect fit with our already successful conference programme and will be of great interest and additional benefit to our engaged public sector audience. We can’t wait for the first one.”

Click here to register to attend the October Data Bites event either in person or online. https://thinkdigitalpartner.zohobackstage.eu/DataBitesOctober