Hello. I’m Gavin Freeguard.

Since 1 January 2021 I’ve been a freelance consultant available for research, policy and advocacy work on data, information, media, digital, government and data visualization. That includes helping your organisation visualise and communicate data more effectively. I’m an accomplished facilitator, chair and host. I’m also working on a book about data.

You can see what I did in my first year of freelancing in my 2021 year note. My projects in 2022 include running the Institute for Government’s Data Bites series and a project on government data sharing during the pandemic, a report for the Open Data Institute on government’s approach to data literacy, supporting mySociety with their TICTeC Labs programme, co-convening one of the Royal Statistical Society’s Covid-19 evidence sessions, and hosting the second episode of ‘The Data Game’ for the Alan Turing Institute.

If you’d like to discuss working together, please email me on gavin@gavinfreeguard.com.

You can also find me on Twitter and on Medium. I compile a weekly newsletter on data and #dataviz called Warning: Graphic Content – you can subscribe via email or follow on Twitter.

Before going freelance, I spent more than seven years working on data and digital government at the Institute for Government, most recently as programme director. At the Institute, I led and developed the organisation’s flagship Whitehall Monitor project (which analyses and visualises the size, shape and performance of central government in the UK), designed data analysis and visualisation training and tools to support people across the organisation to use data more effectively, and created the Data Bites event series (which I will continue to run as an associate of the IfG).

Before joining the IfG, I worked at the highest level of British politics as political adviser on culture, media and sport to Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC MP and the shadow Cabinet (2012-13). Before that, I worked at the Media Standards Trust (2007-12), where my main job was building the Orwell Prize into an organisation that thrives today as the Orwell Foundation.