Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz says AI and data offer major opportunities for Newham, highlighting progress in skills, investment and innovation, and urging confidence in tech to improve services and lives.
The new data economy and AI offer untold opportunities for the public sector, if it is willing to seize them, the Newham’s Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz OBE has said.
She made her comments discussing the Newham Data Strategy, an ambitious project to unlock the possibilities of new tech in local government
Mayor Fiaz said it would make services more efficient and improve residents’ lives.
She was speaking at an event held at UCL East, which brought together experts in the field to talk about the future to leading bodies and students.
Also on the panel were, Tiffany St James, Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer for Liverpool City Region; Eddie Copeland, Director, London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI); and James Culley, Chief Technology Officer, London Design and Engineering UTC.
The event was hosted by the London Borough of Newham, in partnership with Bloomberg Associates and UCL.
The event at the Stratford campus also marked four years of the Newham Data programme set up to upskill residents in data and AI, drive inclusive economic growth, and enhance the council’s use of data and AI to improve public service delivery.
Explaining the rationale for wanting to make Newham a leader in the field, Mayor Fiaz said that the borough was full of potential but had been “held back by story of place, class, racism, and gender politics.”
Mayor Fiaz said that with London moving East as witnessed by the raft of recently announced large scale development, new opportunities were presenting themselves that needed to be seized.
Adding that Newham was a “borough of hope and opportunity where young people have ambition and excitement about the future and are supported to spread their wings and fly.”
And she told the audience: “Let’s not be fearful of AI but let’s command it for our future.”
She said it needed to be embedded into everything that is done to create a “future of hope, possibility and ingenuity”.
The meeting heard how new tech such as Magic Notes, an AI automated tool which writes up meetings for frontline workers, was already playing a vital role in saving social workers’ time.
The event also gave the Mayor to outline what had been achieved since the Newham Data programme set up in September 2021.
It included:
· £1.2b - Inward investment secured into Newham’s digital infrastructure
· £4.08m - Section 106 funding secured to deliver skills, digital inclusion, and data education for Newham residents
· 2,500 residents - Supported through data, AI and digital skills training, including young people, adults returning to work, and small business owners
· 1,080 women - Trained in data and AI across Newham secondary schools, delivered in partnership with Girls in Data
· 100+ SMEs - From Newham supported to adopt AI and digital tools to improve productivity, customer insight, and business planning.
One participant on the day said: “Place matters. This wasn’t a data strategy for data’s sake — it was a place-based approach, rooted in Newham’s story, people and lived experience. Data as a tool for hope.”
