In 2016, Thomas made the choice to leave Toronto to enrol in the Oxford D.Phil in Information, Communications and the Social Sciences program at the world-leading research facility, the Oxford Internet Institute.
Before coming to Oxford, he was employed from 2011 to 2016 as a senior policy advisor to the Ontario Government in child and youth protection services. He contributed to policy on introducing new case management systems. There was frustration, however, on how best to use the new information technologies to support accurate decisions. This represented a divergence between his academic training for a Master of Public Policy at the University of Toronto, and practical work experience of case management at the bureaucratic level.
Attracted by digital government research at the Oxford Internet Institute, Thomas began doctorate studies with the proposed research topic: barriers to the use of data and evidence-based technologies by government organizations. He has carried out extensive field work, comparing different organisations in the child protection system in both the UK and Ontario.
Ready to start his final year of research Thomas decided in early 2020, after commuting back and forth between Toronto and the UK, to bring his family to Oxford for a last year to finalise his fieldwork, meet a major programme milestone, and enjoy the main attractions of college life. But Covid-19 struck – lockdown – closing of libraries, end of in-personal agency interaction, and dashed hopes of presenting his work at an important academic conference in 2020. These delays will necessarily extend research time with no guarantee that his Canadian award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council will be renewed to cover this additional time. Thomas again reiterated, gratefully, how welcome the CCSF scholarship will be in assisting him in 2021.
Thomas, however, continues to be optimistic that he will be able to complete a meaningful thesis and that his research will translate into better practices, to show how agencies and governments can profit from the new technologies to arrive at speedier and more accurate decisions. The Oxford Internet Institute, where Thomas has chosen to base his research and where he has been employed as a research assistant, states that ‘digital connections are now embedded in almost every aspect of our daily lives. Our aim is to positively shape the development of the digital world for the public good’.
The future for Thomas, who has definitely chosen to return to Canada, has yet to be decided between two directions: an academic role, perhaps a post-doctoral fellowship and university teaching; or, return to government policy innovation, with practical consulting on how to introduce better information structures.
Thomas was awarded the Blakes Scholarship for 2020 – 2021.
