Gavin Freeguard

Gavin is an Associate. He worked full time at the Institute from 2013 to 2020, latterly as programme director, and led the Institute’s work on data (including Whitehall Monitor) and digital government. As an associate, he continues to run our Data Bites event series, and has contributed to other work around data in government, digital government and the IfG Academy. 

Gavin studied history and politics as an undergraduate and later completed a masters in the history of political thought. His first job was at the Media Standards Trust, a media policy think-and-do-tank, which included running the Orwell Prize for political writing (as administrator and then deputy director). He left to become political adviser on culture, media and sport to Rt Hon Harriet Harman KC MP and the Labour shadow Cabinet, before joining the Institute. 

As a freelancer, Gavin is also a special adviser at the Open Data Institute, policy associate at Connected by Data and a member of the Public Digital network. He has also done work for organisations including mySociety, the Ada Lovelace Institute, Full Fact, the Alan Turing Institute, Understanding Patient Data at the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Statistical Society. He is a member of HM Treasury’s User and Preparers Advisory Group and the steering group of the UK Open Government Network, and is a trustee of the Orwell Foundation. He has also served on advisory groups for the Office for Statistics Regulation and Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK).