Data Ethics and Society Reading Group

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How we organise the Data Ethics & Society Reading Group

As with much of this repository, the below borrows heavily from Data Ethics Club.

We’ve described how a typical meeting would run in the ‘Facilitating’ document, and so this document is more about how people can contribute to the repository, and how we operate more generally.

Deciding on material to read

The reading list is a curated list of suggestions we have received, and indicates what we have covered in sessions. More detail about previously discussed books is in our Sessions Overview.

From 2025, the organisers will each pick a book to read and decide which one should be part of a future session. In general, we decide based on the following:

• Is the material engaging and interesting?
• Have we covered the topic before?
• Is the book affordable and available?
• Is the information and material up-to-date?

Administrative tasks

More information on the tools we use can be found in our ‘Tools’ page.

Before the meeting

• Bring suggestions to organiser meetings, divide material up between organisers, and decide which material should be discussed at the next event
• Decide date of next meeting
• Create a meeting information file in the Sessions/ folder
• Update the meeting overview file with a link to the new meeting information page
• Create a sign-up form to manage attendees (using Ticket Tailor)
• Produce a newsletter post promoting the event (using Substack)
• Promote the event via the following channels:
  • #ethics channel of the Cross-Government Data Science Slack Workspace
  • AnalystX
  • The following cross-government newsletters
    • Data Science Community of Interest
    • Analysis Function
    • Government Statistical Service
    • Government Operational Research Service
    • CDDO X-Gov Bulletin
• Send a six-week reminder to attendees to get a copy of the reading material
• Decide on three questions around the piece to discuss.
• Set up a calendar event (using Microsoft Teams)
• Send a four-week reminder to attendees with the event invite and the discussion questions
• Set up slido with items pre-populated from the Reading List
• Prepare slides if required
• Send a one-week reminder to attendees with a link to the introductory video
• Send a one-day reminder to attendees with quick links to the online meeting

After the meeting

• Upload attendee numbers
• Update GitHub session pages (e.g. remove session sign-up links, change icon on reading list)
• Send thank you email

Contributing

How can I contribute to the reading list?

Since we organise around a GitHub repository people can submit issues using our issue template. People can also submit pull requests, or simply send us an email and we can upload your suggestions on to the repository - we know not everyone is comfortable using GitHub!

How do we acknowledge contributions?

Contributions can be lots of different things, and so we use the emoji key on our front page. This has been adapted from that used by Data Ethics Club. If you think you should be listed as a contributor but can’t see your GitHub handle listed, please get in touch.

How can I get involved in organising?

We welcome any administrative and organisational help you can offer! Please get in touch via email. We’d especially like to hear from people who are new to the Civil Service and from groups usually under-represented in data science.

I’d like to lead a session on a particular topic or book

Brilliant! Please reach out to us via email and we can set this up with you.

Communicating

We primarily use our Substack newsletter to communicate with interested Data Science practitioners across government. Sign up to hear about upcoming events.

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