Alexander Blandford

Alex is an expert in product management in the public sector. He brings a background covering user research, product management and policy design with a wide range of public sector organisations.

At Public Digital Alex has worked using LLM coding to improve prototyping, ideating and user-centred design at LNER, coached digital, data and technology leaders to build collaborative strategies and deliver on them together, trained city governments in the US on data standards and worked with universities in the UK and Ireland on digital transformations that bring academics and professional services together.

Before joining Public Digital, Alex was Head of Product Management at the University of Cambridge where he established and grew the product management profession and united user-centred disciplines to deliver faster, easier and more equitable services.

Before that, he taught the Oxford Internet Institute's course on digital-era government and politics, served on the UK Open Government Network's steering committee as well as being a trustee of Cambridge Online, a digital inclusion charity. Alex is also the founder and core organiser of UKEduCamp, an 'unconference' dedicated to helping higher and further education practitioners leverage internet-enabled ways of working.

Prior to this, he worked with organisations such as Barnardo's, the Open Data Institute, DCMS, GDS, Land Registry, UKTI, BEIS, NHSx, DfE, Cabinet Office and Parliament.

In his spare time, Alex is pursuing a DPhil studying civic technologist groups through the 2010s and serves as the treasurer of the Norwich Ukulele Society.

alexander.blandford@public.digital