Research
In my research, I'm trying to understand how we can represent people in data in a way that doesn't make it difficult for people to live in this digitised world.
Organisations see people through data.
How should organisations handle the fact that information about people changes over time?
Explore my researchWhat's in a name?
Am I Katherine Wyers or Katherine Kuczyńska-Wyers?
The fact is that they're both correct. I'm Katherine Wyers in my work, but I'm Katherine Kuczyńska-Wyers in my personal life.
Changing my name sounds like it should be simple, but that name is connected to so many things. But if I update my name in one place, it won't necessarily update everywhere. Even if I update it in every database, people still remember me by my old name. It'll be one name in one place and another name in another place. I'm worried that I'd lose the connection between my work now and my track record of work up until now.
Sometimes the person changes, like when I got married. Other times, the environment changes. I was born in Ireland but had never needed an Irish passport until I moved to the UK. Post-Brexit, my Netherlands passport no longer gave me the automatic right to live and work in the UK. So I had to apply for an Irish passport too. The change can come from both sides.
The difficult part is when the person changes, or something around them changes, but it's left up to the person to make the system work for them.
But you can't solve that by giving every system all the latest information about a person because different organisations need different data. Welfare services shouldn't get personal health records by default.
Something that looks like a problem with the technology might actually be a symptom of a much deeper systems problem involving people, workflows, laws and policies. Part of information systems is about computers, but the really gnarly parts are about people.
I find these kinds of problems really interesting because they have these deep ways of affecting our lives, often without us really knowing about it. You might only find out there's a problem when you don't fit the system anymore.
Research
What I'm trying to understand with my research is how to balance the rigidity of infrastructure and data systems with the fact that people's lives change, organisations change, policies change, laws change.
The problem isn't always that the data is wrong. It can be that the same person has different accurate data in different contexts.
Where I work
Writing
I write for a wide audience because there are many different people who make consequential decisions about people and data in their everyday work lives.
Consulting
In my consulting work, I help organisations make changes to their information systems by working across the technical side and the data governance side.
About
I'm an information-systems researcher, software engineer and consultant based in Scotland.
I completed my PhD in Information Systems at the University of Oslo and am currently a Visiting Researcher at the University of Edinburgh.
Before my PhD, I worked in information systems development in health, refugee data management, and education, including USAID-funded work in Myanmar and Thailand with Save the Children, World Education, and Shoklo Malaria Research Unit. I also worked on an UNESCO-funded project in South Africa and a UNICEF-funded project on universal health coverage.
On the technical side, the work involved writing VBA, PHP, and C#, working with Access databases and Excel, and dealing with data quality and data validation. The work also meant speaking with many different stakeholders, handling mismatching records in the data, and working in difficult organisational situations.
I co-founded Grassroots Lab CIC because we saw a need for community programmes based around the problem of standard measurements not fitting real bodies. It grew mainly out of seeing how my life changed when I started making clothes that fit me instead of relying on what the shops sold.
Get in touch
I'd particularly like to hear from you if you want to discuss how infrastructure can include people better, especially if you're thinking intersectionally or about marginalised communities.
I'd also like to hear from you if you're an organisation making changes to a data system and you're concerned that the way people are represented might no longer be sufficient, causing incorrect data or exclusion.
You can email me at hello@katherinewyers.com or contact me using the form below: