People

New infrastructure cannot be built by one individual or company. Rather, it is a group endeavour. But, to the extent that PIB-d has played a lead role, it’s relevant to provide information about the people who are involved. The company has two directors:

• John Harrison is a founder and director of PIB-d. He has been active in the identity management field since setting up Edentity, a pre-cursor to PIB-d, in the year 2000. He has led various advisory projects for public-sector bodies, and several consortium funding bids. He is named inventor on two UK identity-managements patents, now expired. He acts – under sub-contract to Lloyds Register – as the tScheme assessor for all of the gov.uk Verify identity providers. He holds a (first-class) degree in engineering from the University of Bristol, and an MBA from ISA, the graduate programme of the French grande école HEC.
• Paul Hopkins is also a founder and director of PIB-d. He is a specialist in management of IT services and projects, with a particular focus on the Higher Education sector, and currently works as interim IT director as required. For the four years to 2008, he served as director of information systems and services at Newcastle University. He has been chair of the Russell Group of IT Directors (RUGIT), and chair of UCISA Procurement Group. As of April 2020, he is working for NHS England.

Various other people contributed to UCD in the early days, but have now stepped back as their roles have changed. In particular, thanks are due to Matthew Dovey of Jisc, and Professors Di Martin and Bruce Christianson, both formerly of the University of Hertfordshire.