Anna Hirschfeld

Anna leads digital transformation programmes which deliver real human impact.

She is an experienced leader who builds and scales teams to solve highly complex problems. This includes working with governments and public agencies to transform their services so they are human-centred, secure and efficient for both civil servants and citizens. Clients she has supported include the governments of Nova Scotia and British Columbia, UK Research and Innovation, and Homes England.

As Interim Executive Director at the Nova Scotia Department for Cybersecurity and Digital Solutions, Anna reset and then led a large-scale transformation to deliver a new digital vehicle and driver licensing service. This involved founding and scaling new multidisciplinary teams, creating a transformational roadmap, designing new end-to-end services, and introducing new governance structures across three government departments.

Alongside her interim role at the Nova Scotia Department for Cybersecurity and Digital Solutions, Anna undertook a three month technical and governance review of CSDS’ current hosting provision and set out a range of recommendations for how Nova Scotia could move to a new more resilient hosting strategy.

Her knowledge of managing and leading big transformation programmes has enabled her to provide honest and practical advice to senior leaders of large programmes. For example with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Anna led a series of programme reviews to assess the approach and success of a large digital transformation programme to make applying for UK government funding for research and innovation more efficient and effective.

Prior to joining Public Digital, Anna was Senior Product Manager on the Universal Credit programme, successfully taking it from proof of concept to a scaled live service supporting six million people. This was the biggest transformation in the UK benefits system since the founding of the Welfare State. Anna is also a leading expert on digital identity. She worked with GOV.UK Verify to integrate it with Universal Credit, and now sits on the OECD panel helping to draft the Recommendation on the Governance of Digital Identity.