Cleophas Ambira has long been committed to developing professional capacity in archives and records management in Kenya, particularly in the digital environment. He is the training manager at the Kenya Commercial Bank Group and chair of the Kenya Association of Records Managers and Archivists (KARMA), which he founded in 2011. He has carried out records management consultancies for a number of public and private sector institutions in Kenya that have involved restructuring recordkeeping systems, reviewing records management policies and developing appropriate records management training curricula. Dr Ambira has authored works on records management and computer studies and on the relationship between records management and risk management in the banking sector in relation to international good practice. His particular focus has been how the effective management of digital records in Kenya can facilitate e-government and the good practice framework and skill requirements needed to support it, particularly in the light of the rapidly changing technologies that require increasingly robust and efficient systems to support transparency and accountability.

Adrian Brown began his career in the mid-1990s as an archivist at English Heritage, where he wrote and published a digital archiving strategy and built a digital repository, pioneering features now standard in digital repositories internationally. Moving to the UK National Archives in 2002, he developed practical solutions for digital preservation. He led key elements of the Seamless Flow and Digital Continuity Programme, which made it possible to preserve UK government digital records through time and technology change, and he oversaw the National Digital Archive of Datasets. Joining the Parliamentary Archives in 2009, he led the development of a new digital repository and delivered a full digital preservation capability to the UK Parliament. In addition to giving numerous presentations on digital preservation, digitisation and web archiving at conferences, seminars and workshops internationally, Adrian has served on a wide range of bodies, including the Digital Preservation Coalition, the International Records Management Trust and the UK Web Archiving Consortium. An expert adviser to the European Commission and UNESCO, he has received a number of awards for his work, including the Emmett Leahy Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Records and Information Profession in 2016.

Pyrou Chung directs the East West Management Institute’s programmes on natural resource, land and data initiatives in southeast Asia under the Open Development Initiative. As an ecologist and sustainable development expert focused predominantly on the non-profit and non-government sector, her work has been focused on the nexus between environmental governance, conservation and human rights, with an emphasis on implementing integrated biodiversity, natural resource management and land rights initiatives with indigenous, forest-dependent or rural communities. More recently this work has intersected with the open data movement to utilise GIS data and information in an open data platform, Open Development Mekong, which promotes evidence-based decision-making, digital gender inclusion and indigenous data sovereignty. The platform is a one of a kind open data portal in southeast Asia focused upon the Lower Mekong Countries – Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

David Giaretta has worked on digital preservation since 1990 and has led many of the important international developments in this area. He chaired the panel that produced the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model (ISO 14721), which has become the de facto standard for protecting and preserving digital archives. He also led the group that produced the ISO standards for audit and certification of trustworthy digital repositories (ISO 16363) and the requirements for bodies conducting audit and certification of digital repositories (ISO 16919). In addition, he led a number of large digital preservation projects, which represented a major investment by the European Union, working with more than 50 partner organisations. These projects built on his experience working in and leading large data digital repositories and software systems. Dr Giaretta has been involved with the Alliance for Permanent Access (APA) from its establishment and became its director in July 2010. His extensive publications include his book Advanced Digital Preservation (Springer, 2011). Among many awards, David received the Emmett Leahy Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Records and Information Profession in 2012.

A senior records and information manager with 40 years of UK and international experience, Andrew Griffin has had a wide range of international experience, working for the India Office Library and Records, the University of Papua New Guinea, the British Library, the Cayman Islands National Archive and St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. Joining the International Records Management Trust in 1997, he managed and contributed to a range of multi-year projects in The Gambia, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Belize and the East African Community, as well as many short-term projects. In particular, he was actively involved in designing and implementing practical solutions to records and information management challenges, notably in relation to financial, human resource, hospital and legal records. He also worked for the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, where he led a major improvement programme to introduce standards and procedures for managing records. Most recently, he has worked with the National Records Service of the Government of The Gambia supporting the implementation of an electronic records management system.

Prior to becoming a professor of biostatistics at Northumbria University, Ngianga-Bakwin Kandala worked as head of the Health Economics and Evidence Synthesis Research Unit at the Luxembourg Institute of Health. He was an associate professor in health technology assessment (joint appointment Oxford University and the University of Warwick). He also worked at the University of Southampton and King’s College London, as a Mellon Foundation Fellow at the University of Montréal, as associate professor at the University of Botswana and as associate lecturer at the University of Lagos. He is affiliated with the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa as a professor of biostatistics. Dr Kandala has published widely in the field of statistics and health in diverse populations. His books include Advance Techniques in Modelling Maternal and Child Health in Africa (Springer Science, 2014) and Female Genital Mutilation Around the World: Analysis of Medical Aspects, Laws and Practice (Springer Science, 2018), which he co-wrote with Paul Komba. His current research interests include health economics, health technology assessment, statistical methods applied to epidemiology, survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis, meta-analysis and Bayesian modelling, spatial analysis and disease mapping.

Paul Komba is an academic and a barrister based at Northumbria University. His background is in human rights law, global health rights and international development. He has been director of the African Commercial Law Foundation in London and a legal adviser to the Cambridge Refugee Support Group. His research interests include African commercial courts’ handling of records in the digital environment, statistical data for addressing the right to health for victims of conflict-gender violence and the use of ICT in the judiciary. Dr Komba has held a wide range of university teaching and postdoctoral research posts, for instance at the Faculty of Law at the University of Johannesburg, the Kinshasa School of Public Health, the University of Warwick and the University of Cambridge Centre of African Studies. He joined the Department of Engineering and Environment at Northumbria University in 2018. He is co-author with Professor Ngianga-Bakwin Kandala of Female Genital Mutilation Around the World: Medical Aspects, Law and Practice (Springer, 2018).

Tamba Lamin is a business entrepreneur and technology and data architect with a background in technology management, information management telecommunications, network security and computer networking. He is committed to helping design, build and run digital applications that make people’s lives more meaningful and productive. His experience working with global multicultural teams across Asia, Africa, North America, South America and Europe has equipped him to advocate, promote and sponsor civic technology initiatives that focus on reducing corruption and improving accountability in Africa, particularly Sierra Leone. One of the companies that he founded designed and built an open-source election data platform (http://electiondata.io) to facilitate free, fair, safe, secure and transparent elections, with functions including data collection and data-sharing of election results. Tamba is now a senior technology architect for Accenture as well as a part-time doctoral student at Pace University in New York, where he is researching how software framework architecture can affect end-user performance of applications built using such a framework.

Victoria Lemieux is an associate professor of archival science at the School of Information at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where she leads a multidisciplinary blockchain research cluster. Her current research is focused on risk to the availability of trustworthy records, in particular in blockchain and distributed ledger recordkeeping systems, and how these risks impact transparency, financial stability, public accountability and human rights. Dr Lemieux’s many awards for her professional work and research include the 2015 Emmett Leahy Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Records Management, a 2015 World Bank Big Data Innovation Award and a 2016 Emerald Literati Award for her research on blockchain technology. She is a faculty associate at multiple units within UBC, including the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, Sauder School of Business and the Institute for Computers, Information and Cognitive Systems. Previously, she was a senior public sector specialist at the World Bank, and she has held positions as a professional archivist, records manager and risk manager within the public and private sectors. In addition, she has consulted for the United Nations, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the World Bank. She has been a Certified Information Systems Security Professional since 2005.

James Lowry joined the University of Liverpool in 2015 and was co-director of the Centre for Archive Studies until taking up the post of assistant professor at Queens College, City University of New York in 2020. Previously, as deputy director of the International Records Management Trust (2009 to 2015), he developed expertise in policy and system design projects for public sector records and archives management programmes across Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. This experience is reflected in his research focus on official records, data and power, particularly in postcolonial contexts, as well as on transparent government through the intersection of open data and access to records. Focusing in particular on how records and archives management practices can improve the quality of open government data, Dr Lowry led the development of the UK government’s commitment on records management in its Open Government Partnership National Action Plan (2013 to 2015). His publications include Integrity in Government through Records Management, which he edited with Justus Wamukoya (Ashgate, 2014). James has served as chair of the Association of Commonwealth Archivists and Records Managers, secretary to the International Council on Archives’ Africa Programme and trustee of the International Records Management Trust.

During a career of more than 25 years with the National Archives of Canada, John McDonald held a number of positions that facilitated the management of records and information across the Canadian federal government. He was the first winner of the Emmett Leahy Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Records and Information Profession to be recognised for his pioneering leadership and accomplishments in the field of digital records management (in 1999), which had an ‘extraordinary impact on the profession, not only in Canada but around the world’. In his subsequent consulting career, he developed strategic and operational plans for enhancing information management in public sector organisations in Canada and overseas. He has also designed and delivered graduate-level courses at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia and the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. He also contributed to several projects managed by the International Records Management Trust, including developing training material. He is a past chair of the International Council on Archives’ Committee on Electronic Records and Founder and past chair of the Canadian Federal Government’s Information Management Forum.

Julie McLeod, Professor of Records Management in the iSchool at Northumbria University in the Faculty of Computing and Information Sciences, joined the university in 1994 after a career managing information for research and development scientists. Her work has been characterised by a commitment to linking good practice principles to practical challenges. Her research interests focus on digital records management and research data management, and she has created high-quality education programmes that integrate records and information management with other disciplines, for instance law and computing. She has edited the highly respected Records Management Journal since 1995 and continues to be its consulting editor. Its coverage spans all continents, with articles submitted from dozens of countries, covering research and contemporary practice in areas including records management, information governance and risk, often from different disciplinary perspectives. Professor McLeod regularly speaks at conferences, publishes extensively and has co-edited several books. She received the Emmett Leahy Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Records and Information Profession in 2014.

James Manor is a leading world expert on Indian politics. He is the Emeka Anyaoku Professor of Commonwealth Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and the former VKRV Rao Professor at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, India. He was professor of government at Harvard University (1985 to 1987), and was appointed as professorial fellow of political science at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in 1987. He was director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and part-time professor of Commonwealth politics at the University of London (1993–7). Professor Manor has done consultancies for agencies including the World Bank, UNDP and the OECD, as well as for national governments, including the Swedish, Dutch, Norwegian and Colombian governments. His research has mainly been focused in South Asia but also includes sub-Saharan Africa. He has recently done studies of democratic decentralisation in Asia and Africa, elections and politicians’ survival strategies. In addition to his work on state–society relations, his research interests include contemporary history, globalisation and development, human rights, local government, modern history and political institutions.

Amadu Massally is passionate about bringing together Africans in the diaspora. In 2009, he won the National Organization for Sierra Leoneans in North America Diamond Award, which is given to a Sierra Leonean who demonstrates exceptional service to his country and people. He has been involved in many programmes and activities that promote Sierra Leone, including pioneering the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s establishment of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Diaspora Mobilization. He was instrumental in establishing an OGP unit in Sierra Leone, working in the Office of the President. Still actively involved in national programmes in Sierra Leone, he is currently co-coordinating a massive online open education programme, working with TpISENT, a leading ICT professional services company in Sierra Leone, for which he serves as Chief Financial Officer. He attended Morehouse College in Atlanta and the University of Massachusetts, where he earned a degree in Management and Accounting. He is a Certified Public Accountant and currently holds certificates as an Information Systems Auditor and a Professional Scrum Master.

Elizabeth Shepherd joined the Department of Information Studies at University College London in 1992 to update and revise the MA in Archives and Records Management, becoming programme director in 2002, professor of archives and records management in 2011 and head of department in 2018. Previously, she worked in archives and records management in local government. Her research interests include the role of records management in effective information policy compliance and information governance. Professor Shepherd has published numerous articles and (with Geoffrey Yeo) Managing Records: A Handbook of Principles and Practice (Facet Publishing, 2003). Professor Shepherd was instrumental in establishing the International Centre for Archives and Records Management Research and User Studies (ICARUS) to help meet the rapid technological and intellectual changes facing the archives and records management discipline. She presents her research regularly at national and international conferences through invited papers/keynotes and peer reviewed papers. She was a member of the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on National Records and Archives (2000 to 2006).

Anne Thurston has worked on defining international solutions for managing public sector records in lower-resourced countries for nearly three decades. As an academic at University College London and as Director of the International Trust, she has had extensive experience of working with many governments, particularly in Africa, to find practical solutions for protecting records as evidence of citizens’ rights, accountability and transparency, and national development. Between 1970 and 1980 she conducted research in Kenya and was employed by the National Archives. Joining the staff of the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies at University College London in 1980, she developed an international records studies programme. The findings of her groundbreaking survey of recordkeeping systems across the Commonwealth provided the basis for shaping the programme as well as the inspiration for the work of the Trust. Dr Thurston was a member of the UK Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on Public Records between 1994 and 2000, was granted an OBE by the Queen in 2000 for services to public administration in Africa, received a lifetime achievement award from the UK Records Management Society in 2006 and was awarded the Emmett Leahy Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Records and Information Profession internationally in 2007. In recent years, she has worked on a range of projects, including several at the World Bank that were aimed at defining the relationship between effective records management and international development.

Katherine Townsend is a passionate advocate of open data and open government and an expert in policy development, public–private partnerships and civic engagement. She supports civic tech movements across the globe to improve in-person and online connections for social entrepreneurship and local growth and transparency. She worked for the innovation and transparency initiative at the Department of State and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), where she helped launch its Open Data Initiative with the aim of making information transparent, useable and accessible as the norm for international assistance. She also worked with the Code for Africa’s Open Government Fellows, SDG Global Data Partnership and Data Collaboratives for Local Impact in East Africa and co-developed the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition and the Africa Open Data Conference series to demonstrate the benefit of transparent and participatory government. Most recently, she has worked to develop a platform (data.org) for partnerships seeking to increase data science in the social sector, drive data science for social impact and convene and catalyse NGOs to integrate data science into their strategies and decision-making.

For over three decades, Justus Wamukoya has been a leading figure in the crusade to change the culture of recordkeeping in Africa, particularly eastern and southern Africa, with the aim of seeing records and other forms of documentary evidence contribute positively towards democratic governance and accountability. As a staff member of the Kenya National Archives, a senior lecturer in the Department of Library and Information Studies at the University of Botswana, and as professor and later dean of the School of Information Sciences at Kenya’s Moi University, he has gained wide experience of records management issues. A scholar and a practitioner, he has carried out an extensive range of research and consultancy projects and published widely. Professor Wamukoya has played an active part in the development of the East and Southern African Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ICA) and a leading role in the ICA’s Africa Programme, which aims to strengthen the profession across the continent. In addition, Professor Wamukoya has been closely involved in numerous research and educational development projects, contributing substantially to records systems restructuring and other governance and records management improvements, as well as to educational development projects.

Geoffrey Yeo is an academic researcher in the field of records studies. He has published widely on archives and records management topics, including the challenges and opportunities of making, keeping and using records and archives in digital environments. With his latest book Records, Information and Data (Facet Publishing, 2018), he has taken a cutting-edge approach to exploring ideas about convergence among information-related disciplines and attitudes to information and its governance. He is a frequent speaker at international academic and professional conferences and is also co-author (with Elizabeth Shepherd) of Managing Records: A Handbook of Principles and Practice (Facet Publishing, 2003). Yeo worked as an archivist in London for the Corporation of the City of London, St Bartholomew’s Hospital and the Royal College of Physicians before joining the staff of University College London’s School of Library, Archive and Information Studies (now the Department of Information Studies) in 1995, where he taught until he became an honorary researcher in 2014. He has also worked with the International Records Management Trust on projects to restructure hospital records in The Gambia and Ghana and to design training materials in Botswana.