Leadership Centre for Local Government

Cambridge-MIT Institute

University of Sussex

University of Warwick

Worth School

Director of Digital, Data & Technology at Department for Business & Trade (DBT)

Leading a team of ~500 amazing professionals delivering digital products, data tools, data science, content design, service design and core IT for the UK Government's Department for Business & Trade. We run the trade and investment site great.gov.uk, operate the UK's global tariff systems, export and import control systems, business regulation as well as a range of bespoke infrastructure for data and CRM. Also lead on Corporate Sustainability and Customer Experience (CX) for the department. (Held same role at Department for International Trade prior to February 2023 machinery of government changes)

Department for Business and Trade

Director of Digital, Data & Technology (CDIO)

Leading a wonderful team at the intersection of design thinking, place leadership and technology.

Connected Places Catapult

Interim Director of Human Centred Design

Served as Interim COO for the wonderful Open Rights Group. Led a staff restructure, budget review process, shift in office location and move to new core IT systems.

Open Rights Group

Interim Chief Operations Officer

Led on digital, entrepreneurship and change to help Essex face the challenges and opportunities ahead. My role included CDO responsibilities.

I led 440 people with £40m annual revenue budget and £15m annual capital budget. Main teams were Delivery & Service Design; Technology Services; Strategy, Insight & Engagement; Comms & Marketing and Commercial & Traded Services.

During my tenure I restructured every team and found significant efficiencies totalling 33% of spend. I built the case and won support to build a permanent Service Design team, injected £5.4m permanent revenue funding into the struggling IT service, consolidated 135+ websites into a single new site running on the open source platform first created by Stockport council. Also sold a council owned software business to a Private Equity investor and sold some digital assets to a major Silicon Valley business to help support the council’s financial position. 

Together our teams build a new curious, open and agile culture, practice and capabilities to tackle the difficult challenges the UK's second largest council faced.

Essex County Council

Executive Director, Corporate Development

Part of the panel, chaired by Lord Bob Kerslake, considering ways forward for UK devolution to nations and regions. Report published March 2016. Highlights included meeting Vernon Bogdanor and Gordon Brown who was surprisingly funny in private (seriously).

http://www.local.gov.uk/all-party-parliamentary-group

APPG for Reform, Decentralisation and Devolution in the UK

Panel Member, Inquiry into Better Devolution for the Whole UK

Head of Policy & Public Affairs managing strategic public policy issues, content creation, marketing and contributing to product development planning plus leading public facing comms. I  also worked to help shape Crunch's expanding portfolio of products.

As Micro-Business Ambassador for Crunch I  championed freelancers, contractors and small businesses to decision-makers on behalf of the 24,000 micro-businesses in Crunch's Chorus community. Building a voice for the biggest business sector (5.2m micro-businesses recorded in 2015) to make sure government and the economy supports them. Partnered with the RSA to deliver the successful 'Entrepreneurial Audit' research programme and campaigns on dividend taxes, IR35 and changes to Flat Rate VAT.

At the time I worked there Crunch online accountants were the UK's fastest growing accountancy firm for two years running and in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100. With 10,000 clients and 180 staff based in Brighton, Crunch is passionate about building the new economy of freedom and flexibility in business.

Crunch Accounting

Head of Policy & Public Affairs + Micro-Business Ambassador

In this part-time role I worked with The Democratic Society on delivering NHS Citizen for NHS England, supporting other client projects including the Scottish Government and internal digital strategy.

Also offered independent consulting to clients including TechUK with ADASS and the Local Government Association.

The Democratic Society

Interim Digital Lead

Accredited by the LGA Independent Group as a member peer to support councils, councillors and participate in corporate peer reviews of councils.

Local Government Association

Accredited Peer

National spokesperson for the Green Party on Local Government matters.

Green Party of England & Wales

Local Government Spokesperson

I was of nine on the inaugural Leading Members Group providing day-to-day leadership for Key Cities after its founding as an association. Key Cities is a group of 26 mid-size cities working together to influence policy, lobby government and share best practice. Key Cities is recognised as an LGA Special Interest Group.

Through this work I was the LGA Independent Group substitute member of the new LGA Cities Board.

Key Cities

Member, Leading Members Group

Voluntary role advising and supporting O2/Telefonica sponsored work by NLGN looking into what a digital future looks like for local government.

The final report from this work was published in March 2104 and can be viewed here http://www.nlgn.org.uk/public/2014/smart-people-smart-places-realising-digital-local-government/

New Local Government Network

Member, Digital Agenda Advisory Board

On behalf of the Independent Group (which includes Greens) I was one of our two representatives on this national policy board for the Local Government Association until it was merged into another board.

For the board I attended the Department for Transport Bus Partnership Forum as a local government representative.

Member, Economy & Transport Board

Led the only Green-run council in the UK. Championing a great city.

As Leader I chaired the council’s key Policy & Resources committee, Health & Wellbeing Board, Greater Brighton Economic Board, Community Safety Forum, Corporate Parenting Board and the Shoreham Harbour Leaders’ Board. I also sat on the board of the Coast to Capital Local Enterprise Partnership.

Winner of the 2015 LGiU Judges' Special Award for Contribution to Local Government.
A unanimous decision by the judges for Jason as "a first time leader in challenging circumstances who had implemented some impressive and innovative development initiatives." The judges added he has demonstrated strong leadership throughout local government in "cutting edge areas". Also short-listed in 2013 for LGiU Leader of the Year.

Our administration's work delivering record employment, new business creation and visitor numbers has been recognised nationally and internationally including 2015 LGC Delivering Growth award, 2014 CIVITAS European Sustainable Transport City of the Year award and 2013 EuroCities Smart Jobs award. Our work on sustainability led to accreditation by BioRegional as the world's first One Planet City and the UK's first UN Biosphere designation in 40 years.

I wrote a weekly column as Leader in a number of local media.

Brighton & Hove City Council

Leader of the Council

I was one of the public sector board members for the Coast to Capital Local Enterprise Partnership - effectively our local section of English regional government.

Coast to Capital LEP

Member of the Board

A part-time role leading on the maintenance and development of systems essential to ORG's operations including tools to manage supporters and donations.

Systems Development Officer

As this fast-growing NGO’s general manager I was responsible for the core operations of the Open Knowledge Foundation including finances, contracts and supporting the board in their strategic decision-making. All aspects of the role involved significant team-working with colleagues within the organisation and partners contracted in delivering EU projects. Achievements included:

• Leading successful bids for a number of major new projects including the EU's open data portal;

• With my involvement, we won millions in funding from bodies including the Omidyar Network, the Knight Foundation and the EU;

• I project-managed teams of developers and other staff to deliver two major EU-funded projects.

I stepped down from this role when it became clear that I was going to become Council Leader. I felt I needed to dedicate as much time as possible to the new role of leading a city council.

Open Knowledge Foundation

Foundation Coordinator

On leaving Netmums there was a short gap before I could step full-time into my new permanent role at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Knowing I had this gap, the Executive Director at the Open Rights Group (where I had done voluntary work before and helped to co-found) asked me in to help restructure this non-profit as it went through a period of change. I reported to the board and the Executive Director. I helped stabilise the organisation and delivered key projects including:

• New processes and technology for supporter recruitment;

• Revised HR policies;

• Wrote and submitted major grant applications;

• Provided marketing and press support.

Acting Assistant Executive Director

I led the technology department, which was central to this very successful parenting site. The site was seeing immense growth but had a tight budget so whilst recruiting some new staff, we also had to push ourselves and suppliers to support high traffic in the most economical ways possible.

• As a member of the senior management team I contributed to wider business strategy planning;

• Worked with the Department for Education on integrating their online plans for the Family Information Service into the site;

• Worked with health service partners to provide professional online support to forum users around the clock backed by a custom case-working system we developed;

• Led my in-house developers plus suppliers to deliver a complete technological revamp, site redesign and major features to create new income streams;

• Site traffic more than doubled during my tenure to exceed 20 million page views per month.

Netmums Ltd.

Head of Technology

As Council Leader I chaired numerous committees.

For 2011/12 I was Cabinet member for Finance & Central Services and sat on the Council's Governance and Standards Committees.

I previously also sat on the Audit, Licensing, Health Overview & Scrutiny Committee and the Children & Young Persons' Trust Board. Over my time in office I was the local Green spokesperson for Finance, Health and Waste/Recycling issues.

Green City Councillor, Regency Ward

I led the observation mission by 25 volunteers which monitored the e-voting and e-counting across the 2007 elections in Scotland and England. The resulting report helped to shape the debate with e-voting no longer a government priority. The whole campaign I managed consisted of numerous events, press work, reports and media interviews.

e-voting coordinator

Foundation Governor with ICT responsibilities

St Mary's RC Primary School, Portslade

Foundation Governor

Various consultancy projects, primarily to the software industry.

Kitcat & Kitcat Ltd

Non-executive Director

With my co-founders I built and led this Brighton-based digital agency specialising in online communities. Clients were diverse including Sprite (Coca-Cola Company), Royal Holloway University of London, COINS Construction Industry Software, Tonbridge School, Animal Aid and the Stopgap Group. As a co-founder I was involved in all elements of the business from client delivery, sales, recruitment and finances. I was the creator of the key technologies which powered sites for our clients including Netmums.

It was through Swing Digital and a number of smaller spin-off firms that I really learnt my business skills including marketing, making pitches and using freelancers to expand our capacity. We had loyal customers that trusted our approach, so much so that I continue to serve some of them as a consultant. I chose to move on to Netmums as this offered new challenges and the chance to be in charge of a very large, fast-growing site.

Jason Kitcat