Our Core team
Will Callaghan
Our Product Lead, Will has previously worked at the Government Digital Service on Search and moving central government departments to GOV.UK. He's also held senior roles at Adur & Worthing, Brighton & Hove, Croydon and Cumbria councils.
Finn Lewis
Finn is our Technical Lead. He is a hugely experienced web developer, technical project manager and scrum master. He brings an immense love of all things Drupal, open source and co-operative to all he does.
Aaron Hirtenstein
Aaron is our community lead and a founder member of Agile Collective for 10 years. He has been involved in LocalGov Drupal since the early stages of the project, working on the governance side. He's now our Community Lead.
Tim Hunt
Tim is a director of Data Content Reach and our comms lead. He has a background in independent publishing and campaigning. He’s passionate about co-operatives and is a director of several.
Our elected board
LocalGov Drupal is run and funded through Open Digital Co-operative (ODC).
ODC is a multi-stakeholder cooperative. Membership is drawn from council and supplier subscribers. They ultimately own ODC.
The members elect the board and vote at our AGMs.
The board
The Open Digital Cooperative board of directors meets four times per year. It is elected annually by the members.
The Open Digital Cooperative board is responsible for ensuring the financial sustainability of LocalGov Drupal and working with the subscribers on all strategic aspects of the project.
Our board is:
- Will Callaghan, Friendly Digital
- Finn Lewis, Open Code
- Maria Young, Agile Collective
- Michael Brown, Newcastle City Council
- Kate Hurr, Cumberland Council
- Jamie Dixon, Wirral Council
- Justine Pocock, Chicken (co-opted)
Thank you!
We've been overwhelmed by the support LocalGov Drupal has received down the years. Here's a roll call of people we'd like to thank.
The early days
Alick Mighall for insisting that we open source Brighton & Hove's Drupal 8 code.
Ali Brady, then head of Brighton & Hove's Digital First programme, for agreeing and pushing the idea forward.
Our brilliant original product team - Ayce Allchorn, Lana Bozovic, Thomas Davies, Lorna Howes and colleagues from Clearleft.
Neil Lawrence, then Oxford and now Dorset, who was the first person from another council to wholeheartedly support open sourcing our work.
Two councils agree to work together
Tom Steel, Website Product Manager at Croydon, who jumped at the chance of reviewing the Brighton & Hove platform, recommending it for re-use, then committing his team to the task of working through common needs.
Neil Williams, Dave Briggs and Annie Heath at Croydon for their unequivocal support.
Larissa Reed, IT managers, Andy Wallis at Brighton & Hove for agreeing to work with Croydon on shared Drupal code, and Andy Broomfield for his ongoing commitment and contribution.
The Croydon product team that picked up the work and led us forward - Adnan Muhammad, Ben Hills-Jones, Chris Stevens, Corinne Pinfold, Chris O'Leary, Design Dave Hamilton, Mohamed Elghorri, Naomi Charles, Steph Wilson, and Mira Galati. Also thanks to the council's wider team of content designers Angie Forson, Adam Ranger and Amelia Walker for adopting LocalGov Drupal and giving us great feedback.
Discovery onwards
Everyone at our funder, the Local Digital Collaboration Unit at DLUHC - led by Paul Maltby and May-N Leow with Matt Wood-Hill, Mark Carlsson, and Ben Cheetham. Plus everyone who collaborated on the Local Digital Declaration without which this project would not have happened.
All of the councils who made a leap of faith by joining our initial DLUHC funded project - Colin Stenning from Bracknell Forest, Kate Hurr from Cumbria, John Edwards from Lambeth, Oliver Hannan and Courtney Allen from London Councils, Alasdair Maclean from Westminster and Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea.
Agile Collective for technical and governance work - led by Finn Lewis with Aaron Hirtenstein, Stephen Cox, Ekes, Ian Bellchambers and Sally Varne. The team continued to Beta where we were joined by Maria Young, Richard Rowley and James Hall.
DXW for product and research work - amazing insights led by Ert Erol and John Waterworth.
Andrew Katz from Moorcrofts for being a fount of legal knowledge.
Telltale Research for detailed insights during our Beta - led by Alex Clark.
Data Content Reach for the serious sharpening up of our comms - led by Michael Wignall and Tim Hunt.
Annertech for being the second Drupal supplier to regularly contribute to LocalGov Drupal. Particularly thanks to Mark Conroy for his great work on the new base theme and regular Twitch streams.
David Siddall from Waltham Forest for being the first person from a council to suggest and lead a working group - Content lifecycle and workflow - that's gone on to deliver features we're deploying now.
John Edwards, formerly of Lambeth Council, for the first public use of LocalGov Drupal with lambeth.gov.uk (narrowly beating Croydon).
Waldo Jaquith for being our first friend across the Atlantic, by backing us and supporting with excellent advice.
All those who've been on our Steering Group. Including Keelan Fadden-Hopper, Melanie Reid, Mark Conroy, Angie Forson, Andy Broomfield, and Colin Stenning.