Paul Neville, director of digital, data and technology at The Pensions Regulator (TPR), is building strong IT foundations as part of a five-year strategy to help transform the organisation from a compliance-based to a risk-based regulator. He explains what that change will mean in practice over the next few years.
“As a regulator, we’ll obviously still have specific processes we expect people to follow, but we’ll be much more concerned about the outcome that we’re trying to achieve, and we’ll make decisions based on that demand,” he says.
“To make that shift, we need to understand our data. We need to have the right level of automation to explore information, measure outcomes, and deliver those outcomes with industry and other government bodies interested in pensions. We imagine a future world in which information flows between organisations.”
A historian by education, Neville entered the world of business as the internet boom gathered pace in the 1990s. Describing himself as a self-taught digital leader, he developed his skills in the commercial sector at blue-chip companies such as Sky and BT, and with startups and smaller businesses.
His transformation work in larger firms focused on delivering big technology-enabled change programmes, centred on boosting customer experiences. Mid-career, he decided to apply those skills for public benefit and worked as a consultant for two major charities, Marie Curie and Macmillan, helping those organisations to transform digitally.
Neville then turned to the public sector to apply his skills in another for-good area. He worked in digital leadership roles at the London Borough of Waltham Forest, UK Export Finance and Enfield Council, before joining TPR in October 2023. Neville reflects on this final move.
“It was the opportunity to take all of that experience and deliver on a national scale and impact everybody, because almost everyone has a pension, and the opportunity to make that process work for the citizens of this country, and make a difference for people in retirement, is a massive issue,” he says.
“Secondly, the chief executive, my boss, Nausicaa Delfas, was setting up an opportunity to change, not only TPR, but the pensions industry, so the role felt like a chance to be a central part of that journey, because not every CIO gets to sit on the board of an organisation.”
Transforming processes
Neville reflects on the transformation journey at TPR, saying it’s been an exciting ride: “Everyone on the executive board is aligned on the fact that digital, data and technology are the key enablers for helping us change as an organisation, and also helping the pensions industry transform.”
Late last year, Neville launched a digital, data and technology strategy, a set of missions over a five-year plan to renew TPR’s capabilities, embracing new ways of working, driving efficiency, automation and innovation. In March this year, he launched the data component of the strategy, which establishes a collaborative plan to drive adoption of new data technologies and standards.
“I am proud of that strategic work,” he says. “That effort includes strengthening our technology foundations, improving our capability in terms of automation, and making sure we have the skills in my team to develop the future. We’ve hired quite a lot of people and also consolidated similar skills across the organisation, and that’s enabled us to deliver more and save money on suppliers, because we’ve done a lot in-house.”
Neville says the projects his team has worked on include delivering artificial intelligence (AI) tools that help increase automation. They’ve also focused on improving cyber security and data governance to ensure safe and secure access to high-quality internal information.
The team also recently launched an innovation service to foster conversations with industry stakeholders. Neville says TPR is encouraging and enabling people and organisations to think differently about the services they deliver to their customers and the benefits they provide.
“That’s just a small selection of the things we’ve done so far,” he says. “We’ve got just under four years left of the plan. There’s a lot more we want to do, but we have built the confidence, both internally and externally, that we are a different TPR and we can deliver. That encourages everyone in our industry to think differently as well.”
Building foundations
Neville says the transformation work enabled through the strategy so far is focused on building the right technological foundations at TPR.
In addition to cyber security and data governance projects, his team has focused on service management initiatives that help TPR rationalise its application estate. The organisation has adopted an agile, product-based approach to deliver reusable capabilities for flexible services in key areas related to pensions governance within the organisation and externally.
TPR is also making progress on automation, including in case management. He inherited a situation where cases were often managed on spreadsheets or via one-off technology solutions. In short, nothing was joined up. Neville is using automation, via Microsoft Dynamics 365, to take a different approach.
“Everyone on the executive board is aligned on the fact that digital, data and technology are the key enablers for helping us change as an organisation, and also helping the pensions industry transform”
Paul Neville, The Pensions Regulator
“We’re delivering a single case management system,” he says. “We are working to make sure the process is streamlined, so we’re thinking about the business process first. By taking that approach, we can deliver in an agile and iterative way. Where we’ve already rolled that technology out, we’ve delivered productivity savings of around 60%.”
Neville expects the progress made through case management automation to be repeated in other areas. As automation takes hold in the organisation, he anticipates people will spend less time on paperwork and more time delivering better services.
Given the developments in the technology sector during the past few years, AI is playing a key role.
“We are deploying AI to specific use cases,” he says. “I’ve got a fantastic data science team, who are developing lots of very clever tools for us.”
Embracing AI
Neville says the next two years will be spent honing these technology initiatives and delivering tangible results.
Critical projects include implementing organisation-wide access to data via Dynamics 365 services and completing transformation projects in core areas, such as cyber security and data governance. It’s these foundations and the application of emerging technology that will help TPR transform from a compliance-based to a risk-based regulator.
Two years from now, Neville expects all foundational work, from case management to customer relationship management (CRM) systems, will be embedded within the organisation. On these foundations, employees will use AI-enabled tools to boost their working processes.
“That preparatory work will enable us in the future to create more customer-facing digital capabilities,” he says.
One example of where TPR is applying AI is analysing online news sites to scan for potential risks in pension schemes. Neville saw AI could provide a helping hand to what is currently a manually intensive process.
“That’s a great example, because many pension schemes don’t have the same name as the provider,” he says. “The technology does quite a lot of joining up behind the scenes to make that process work.”
Another example is using AI to analyse Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) statements, which organisations must submit to comply with legislation. Once again, generative technology – in the form of OpenAI and Microsoft Azure technology – is helping TPR staff summarise lengthy prose and create insights as a basis for intervention when required.
“Those are just two examples,” says Neville. “We’ve got other risk tools that we’re using. We are also rolling out Copilot internally, and we’re in the middle of our plan for that technology. We’re trialling GitHub Copilot for our developers, and they’re starting to write test scripts, which is fun. We’re still at the beginning of this work, as are lots of people, but these projects are a taster of what we want to achieve.”
Solving challenges
Neville says the result of this work will be that the future TPR will have an operating environment that differs greatly from its traditional, manually intensive processes. Today, the organisation maintains a digital portal, where people send, for example, pension scheme returns as part of a large, intensive data upload. Neville foresees a better approach.
We need to understand our data, and so does the industry. The firms need to provide better customer experiences for people, like you and me, who have pensions Paul Neville, The Pensions Regulator
“There won’t necessarily be a scheme return like you see today, because we will have the information we need, and organisations across the industry will be more digitally enabled, so they’re able to drive the kind of innovation and competition in the market that will benefit savers, people with pensions and employers that offer pensions,” he says.
This new level of digital interaction will make it easier for TPR and organisations in the pensions sector to tackle some of the thorny issues of the day. One of these issues is adequacy, or the extent to which people save enough money in pension schemes for their retirement.
“We need to understand our data, and so does the industry. The firms need to provide better customer experiences for people, like you and me, who have pensions. By driving a customer focus, we think the industry will perform better,” he says.
“We may even feel a bit like a fintech as an organisation, because we’ll be enabling innovation. Technology will produce the insights we need to work with the industry. So, we could be operating in a completely different world, which drives innovation and change for everyone.”
Neville continues to seek ways to push transformation forward. He recently helped launch the Pensions Data and Digital Working Group, which will help ensure TFP and the pension industry work together to embrace digital, data and technology and achieve the digitalisation and automation aims outlined in the five-year strategy.
“The working group has 15 members,” he says. “It represents a cross-section of people from different parts of industry, so trustees, actuaries, lawyers, but also people from more technical backgrounds as well. It’s about getting all kinds of people involved to help solve the problems and move to this new world.”
Justice for Far Sidecartoonist Gary Larson: A team of scientists has observed, for the first time, a cow using a tool in a flexible manner. The ingenuity of “Veronika,” as the animal is called, shows that cattle possess enough intelligence to manipulate elements of their environment and solve challenges they would otherwise be unable to overcome.
Veronika is a pet cow in Austria. Her owners don’t use her for meat or milk production. Nor was she trained to do tricks; on the contrary, for the past 10 years she has developed the ability to find branches in the grass, choose one, hold it with her mouth, and scratch herself with it to relieve skin irritation.
Until now, only chimpanzees had convincingly demonstrated the ability to employ tools to improve their living conditions. Recent studies also point to whales as the only marine animals capable of using complex tools. This European cow is about to join that exclusive group of ingenious animals.
Videos of Veronika circulating online caught the attention of veterinary researchers in Vienna. They visited the farm, conducted behavioral tests, and carried out controlled trials. “In repeated sessions, they verified that her decisions were consistent and functionally appropriate,” a press release stated.
Veronika’s abilities go beyond simply using a point to scratch herself, explain the authors of the study published in Current Biology. In the tests, the cow was offered different textures and objects, and she adapted according to her needs. Sometimes she chose soft bristles and other times a stiffer point. The researchers say she used different parts of the same tool for specific purposes and even modified her technique depending on the type of object or the area of her body she wanted to scratch.
Although they consider using a tool to relieve irritation “less complex” compared to, for example, using a sharp rock to access seeds, the specialists greatly value Veronika’s ability. For now, she demonstrates that she can decide which part of the tool is most useful to her. The finding suggests that we have underestimated the cognitive capacity of cattle, according to the authors.
Why Is Veronika So Skilled?
The team acknowledges that it’s still too early to say that all cows can use tools with the same skill as Veronika. For now, the researchers are trying to determine how this cow developed an awareness of her surroundings.
Researchers believe her particular circumstances played a role. Veronika has lived for 10 years in a complex, open environment filled with manipulable objects—a very different experience from that of cattle raised for milk and meat production. These conditions fostered exploratory and innovative behavior, they say. They are now searching for more videos of cattle using tools to gather further evidence about their cognitive abilities.
“Until now, tool use was considered a select club, almost exclusively for primates (especially great apes, but also macaques and capuchins), some birds like corvids and parrots, and marine mammals like dolphins. Finding it in a cow is a fascinating example of convergent evolution: intelligence arises as a response to similar problems, regardless of how different the animal’s ‘design’ may be,” said Miquel Llorente, director of the Department of Psychology at the University of Girona, who was not involved in the study, in a statement to the Science Media Centre Spain.
The Met Police has announced that its deployment of permanent live facial recognition (LFR) cameras in Croydon has led to 103 arrests, with the force claiming it has reduced crime in the local area by 12%.
The Met’s announcement comes just a week ahead of a judicial review against its use of LFR, which will assess whether it has been using the technology lawfully. The legal challenge was launched by anti-knife campaigner Shaun Thompson after he was wrongly identified as a suspect by the force’s LFR system, alongside privacy campaigners at Big Brother Watch.
While LFR is typically deployed by the force in an overt manner, with specially equipped cameras mounted atop a visibly marked police van to scan and compare people’s unique facial features against watchlists in real time, this marks the Met’s first covert deployment of the cameras that can be monitored by officers remotely.
In a press release, the Met claimed that running deployments without a van has increased the efficiency of its LFR operations, with an arrest being made on average every 34 minutes when in use, while also reducing the average time to locate wanted individuals by more than 50% when compared with van-based deployments.
Of those arrested, it added a third were for offences related to violence against women and girls, such as strangulation and sexual assault, with other arrests over recall to prison, burglary and possession of an offensive weapon.
“The increase in LFR deployments across crime hotspots in London is driven by its proven impact and success – with more than 1,700 dangerous offenders taken off London’s streets since the start of 2024, including those wanted for rape and child abuse,” said Lindsey Chiswick, the Met and national lead for LFR.
“This is why we are trialling a new and innovative pilot in Croydon,” she said. “It allows us to explore a different way of using facial recognition by operating it remotely and more efficiently. The amount of arrests we have made in just 13 deployments shows the technology is already making an impact and helping to make Croydon safer. Public support remains strong, with 85% of Londoners backing the use of LFR to keep them safe.”
The Met added that its pilot deployment of permanent LFR cameras will undergo an evaluation in the coming months to assess its effectiveness, but that there are currently no plans to expand its permanent deployment to other sites in London.
It also said the Met will continue to run engagement sessions with Croydon residents and councillors to explain how LFR works, outline the intelligence-led approach behind deployments, and set out the safeguards in place to protect privacy and rights.
“The Met’s decision to roll out facial recognition in areas of London with higher Black populations reinforces the troubling assumption that certain communities … are more likely to be criminals,” said Green Party London Assembly member Zoë Garbett at the time, adding that while nearly two million people in total had their faces scanned across the Met’s 2024 deployments, only 804 arrests were made – a rate of just 0.04%.
Executive mayor of Croydon Jason Perry said in the Met’s press release, however, that the arrest figures show “that this pioneering technology is helping to make our streets safer”.
Broken windows in the panopticon
Perry added: “I look forward to continuing to work with the Met Police to tackle crime, as part of our zero-tolerance approach to fixing the ‘broken windows’, restoring pride in our borough and making Croydon a safer place for all our residents.”
Under the “broken windows” theory of policing, first posited by US criminologists James Wilson and George Kelling in the early 1980s, leaving even minor disorder unchecked (such as graffiti, antisocial behaviour or vandalism) encourages people to engage in more serious crimes.
While advocates of this approach therefore argue for the proactive, zero-tolerance policing of minor infractions as a way of instilling order and deterring more serious criminal conduct, critics argue it encourages aggressive or confrontational policing practices that disproportionally target poor and minoritised communities, ultimately breeding resentment against authorities.
In a recent interview with former prime minister Tony Blair, current UK home secretary Shabana Mahmood described her ambition to use technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and LFR to achieve Jeremy Bentham’s vision of a “panopticon”, referring to his proposed prison design that would allow a single, unseen guard to silently observe every prisoner at once.
Typically used today as a metaphor for authoritarian control, the underpinning idea of the panopticon is that, by instilling a perpetual sense of being watched among the inmates, they would behave as authorities wanted.
“When I was in justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his panopticon,” Mahmood told Blair. “That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.”
While the use of LFR by police – beginning with the Met’s deployment at Notting Hill Carnival in August 2016 – has ramped up massively in recent years, there has so far been minimal public debate or consultation, with the Home Office claiming for years that there is already “comprehensive” legal framework in place.
However, the Home Office said in late 2025 that although a “patchwork” legal framework for police facial recognition exists (including for the increasing use of the retrospective and “operator-initiated” versions of the technology), it does not give police themselves the confidence to “use it at significantly greater scale … nor does it consistently give the public the confidence that it will be used responsibly”.
It added that the current rules governing police LFR use are “complicated and difficult to understand”, and that an ordinary member of the public would be required to read four pieces of legislation, police national guidance documents and a range of detailed legal or data protection documents from individual forces to fully understand the basis for LFR use on their high streets.
There have been repeated calls from both Parliament and civil society over many years for the police’s use of facial recognition to be regulated.
More recently, the Ada Lovelace Institute published a report in May 2025 that said the UK’s patchwork approach to regulating biometric surveillance technologies is “inadequate”, placing fundamental rights at risk and ultimately undermining public trust.
Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales has been called the last decent tech baron. It’s sounds like a flattering label, although one I usually associate more with yacht-dwelling meatheads who feed their herds of cattle homegrown macadamia nuts; the kind of person who can most recently be found wining and dining with the President of the United States and his coterie of MAGA sycophants.
Wales, on the other hand, keeps things relatively low-key. Even as the site he founded, Wikipedia, turns 25 years old this month, he seems more interested in fixing his home Wi-Fi than joining the tech elite’s performative power games. He has also spent the past few months promoting a new book, The Seven Rules of Trust, that uses Wikipedia’s overarching strategy and unlikely rise to articulate Wales’ playbook for fixing much of what’s broken in today’s deeply polarized and antagonistic society.
On this week’s episode of The Big Interview, Wales and I discussed what it means to build something used by billions of people that’s not optimized for growth at all costs. During our discussion he reflected on Wikipedia’s messy, human origins, the ways it’s been targeted by governments from Russia to Saudi Arabia, and the challenges of holding the line on neutrality in an online ecosystem hostile to the notion that facts even exist. We also talked about what threatens Wikipedia now, from AI to conspiracy-pilled billionaires, and why he’ll never edit an entry about Donald Trump. Read our full conversation below.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
KATIE DRUMMOND:Jimmy Wales, welcome to The Big Interview. Thank you so much for being here.
JIMMY WALES: Thanks for having me on.
We always start these conversations with a few quick questions, like a little warmup for your brain. Are you ready?
Yes.
What’s an internet rabbit hole you’ve fallen into most recently?
Home Assistant. I’ve just started using Home Assistant to run smart home devices, and there’s a huge community and thousands of things to read about and so on and so forth. So it’s what I’m obsessed with.
What is this community doing?
Troubleshooting. People are working on extensions to deal with every kind of thing in the world, and it’s amazing.
What’s a subject you never argue about online anymore?
I would say I don’t argue with anybody about trans issues. There’s absolutely no point in it. It’s too toxic. I never did argue about it, but I don’t even talk about it.
You’re just going to stay away.
Yeah, it’s too unpleasant.
What do you trust more: Wikipedia or ChatGPT?
Definitely Wikipedia.
I had to ask. What’s your favorite website or app that is not Wikipedia?
I really do like parts of Reddit. There’s some really great communities on Reddit, and great people. I lurk and read in the personal finance subreddit. There’s just a lot of really nice people there. I’m always amazed by it.
Reddit is really having a moment. I find that I spend a lot more time lurking in the Reddit app on my phone, because I would rather read thoughtful conversations than scroll on X.
That’s exactly it. It’s like a place with paragraphs.
And often really thoughtful people. What is the best thing about living in the UK versus the US?
Well, my family’s here. I always say this about the US: Tech is in Silicon Valley, and politics is in Washington, and movies and showbiz are in LA, and finance is in New York. But all those things are in London.
So if I lived in Silicon Valley, I would only have tech friends because that’s who lives there. Whereas in London, it’s much more comprehensive. All kinds of people. So I like that.
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