My work focuses on ethical and inclusive digital transformation, helping sectors get the most out of the effective and creative use of technology.

I am currently Head of Digital Policy for the National Lottery Heritage Fund,  the largest dedicated funder of heritage in the UK. The Fund provides leadership across the sector and works to ensure the UK’s heritage supports positive and lasting change for people and communities.

My role is to help ensure that the National Lottery Heritage Fund makes the most impactful grants it can, leading on digital policy and sector wide digital skills development.

I started in post shortly before lockdown, quickly focusing on helping the heritage sector in it’s use of digital to effectively respond to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to plan and redesign for the future. As part of my work, I lead the Digital Skills for Heritage initiative, which focuses on raising digital confidence and creativity across the cultural sector, supporting digital leadership, innovation and transformation.

You can find me on Twitter (for the time being), Mastodon, and LinkedIn.

Previously, on Josie Fraser

My previous roles have included:

• Senior Technology Advisor at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.  I led on a wide range of domestic, cross-government and international digital policy initiatives (2017-2020). This included work on unlocking the power of geospatial data; helping senior civil servants across government get to grips with digital; Leading on education and online anonymity for the UK’s Online Harms White Paper; leading domestically and internationally on online Violence against Women and Girls; overseeing the Law Commission’s review of the law relating to communications offences; and acting as lead representative for the UK in the Digital Nations group. I led the UK delegation on behalf of our Government at the 2019 Ministerial Summit, hosted by Uruguay.

• Board Member then Chair of the Board of Trustees for Wikimedia UK (2015-2020).  Wikimedia UK is a charity dedicated to collecting, developing, promoting and distributing open knowledge, and represents the UK within the global Wikimedia movement. 

• ICT Strategy Lead for Leicester City Council’s £340 million schools building programme, delivering 23 new and refurbished secondary schools (2010-2016) and designing an internationally recognised workforce development programme. This included running Europe’s first schools conference on open education (2015); supporting Leicester City Council as the first council in Europe to provide its school employees with permission to openly licence the educational resources they produce in the course of their work (2014); and commissioning and co-authoring OER Guidance for Schools (2015), the first schools focused open educational resource guidance of its kind.

• Supporting university and further education projects on physical and digital learning spaces for JISC’s Institutional Innovation programme (2009-2010)

• Producing ‘Cyberbullying: Supporting School Staff‘ for the UK Government – the first national cyberbullying guidance for school staff released by any country (2009)

• Working as Lead Community Architect on JISC’s ground breaking Emerge project -a national university and further education learning technology research and development project focusing on digital professional identities, networks and communities (2007-2009) 

• Producing ‘Young People and Social Networking Services‘ – The UKs first toolkit for schools providing advice and guidance on using social networks, produced for Becta on behalf of Childnet International (2008)

• Delivering ‘Safe To Learn: Cyberbullying‘, ‘Cyberbullying: a whole school community issue‘ for the UK Government- the first national level cyberbullying guidance for schools (2007)

• Convening the International Edublog Awards between 2005-2008