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“Data Science isn’t neutral”; books such as Race After Technology (2019), Invisible Woman (2019) and Data Feminism (2020) have highlighted the social and ethical impact of Statistics, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Next session

📖 Our next sessions will be on Tuesday 29 April and Wednesday 14 May 2025 to discuss Supremacy by Parmy Olson

➡️ SIGN UP HERE

Who are we?

The Data Ethics and Society Reading Group is a space for public sector colleagues to reflect on the ethical implications of our work. We read books that relate to doing data science ethically. You can contact us on xgov-data-ethics@proton.me.

📝 Read our code of conduct here.

How do our events work?

We organise and sessions to cover two books a year. You can see what we have read previously on our reading list. Have a suggestion? Add it to our reading materials. Our sessions are typically an hour long, including breakout rooms.

📺 Watch our short 4-minute video or read our facilitating guide to understand what to expect at a session.

Stay in the loop

Join our Substack mailing list to hear about upcoming events.

We also hang out in the ✨ ➡️ #ethics ⬅️ ✨ channel of the cross-government data science slack workspace.

Get Involved

If you're interested in joining us in organising, take a look at our facilitating, organising and tools guides to see if it might be for you. Get in touch via email if so.

Interested in starting your own group at your organisation? All resources included in this repo are available under the terms of the license.

How to make suggestions

If you'd like to make a suggestion for what to read, please do so however you prefer:

add a suggestion to our Google Forms
make an issue - use the suggestion(s) template.
make a Pull Request (PR) on our repository
contact us via email

Suggestions will be viewed by the organisers and several times a year we will ask those signed-up to our mailing list to vote on a book to be read at a futute event.

Attendance

This group is exclusively for the UK public sector (central and local government and their arms-length bodies, government companies, policing and public health organisations, such as the NHS).

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use a personal email address to register and access the event on Microsoft Teams?

Please register with your work address to help us check that you are a UK public sector employee. If you use a personal email address, your registration may be cancelled.

How do you make your events accessible to all attendees?

Microsoft Teams provides a live captioning feature for attendees to use. We encourage our speakers to design slides with accessibility in mind, and we will try our best to send the slides in advance.