Doug Brown
Deputy Director, Technology Futures Unit,
Department for Children, Schools and Families
Doug has been involved in educational computing since starting as teacher in the early 1970's. Having taught in secondary schools in Ipswich and Birmingham he joined the renowned Birmingham Educational Computing Centre in 1981. As a peripatetic head of department he had a brief to make himself redundant in every school he worked in - by training staff in the school to take over his teaching role.
As computing use spread Doug took on the role of managing the in-service training and survived a number of reorganisations rising to firstly head the advisory team for ICT and then acting for a short spell as director of the whole of Birmingham's Educational Support Services.
In 1991 he became schools ICT adviser in Birmingham and developed responsibility for the strategic direction of ICT in schools across the LEA. During this time he led on creating the Birmingham Grid for Learning - Birmingham's response to the Government's National Grid for Learning which is now seen as a leading example of what is possible.
Doug also has an international reputation having been the organiser of the 1995 IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) World Conference on Computers in Education which is held every five years. He is also a leading member of their secondary working group and recently chaired an international event on the school of the future. Regularly invited to present keynote sessions on this topic, in August he opened the educational strand of the World Computer Congress in China.
Currently Doug is Divisional Manager of ICT in Schools Division which leads on behalf of the Department for Education and Skills on the Government's ICT in schools policies.
