Edgar Whitley

Dr Edgar Whitley is a Professor of Information Systems at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the co-editor of Information Technology and People, and Senior Editor for the Journal of Information Technology and the AIS Transactions of Replication Research.

Edgar's expertise lies in digital identity and privacy and data governance. He is a senior voice on the legal and ethical side of data governance and the regulation of data, having served as research co-chair for the European Conference on Information Systems in 1993, 2009 and 2021, and track co-chair for the International Conference on Information Systems in 2003 and 2011. He is currently co-chair of the Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group (PCAG) to the Government Digital Service and GOV.UK, a member of the Cabinet Office Digital Economy Act 2017 Debt and Fraud Information Sharing Review Board, the Cabinet Office Digital Economy Act 2017 Public Service Delivery Review Board, and the DCMS National Data Strategy Forum. He is also a member of the Scottish Government Digital Identity Scotland Expert Group and the Open Banking Expert Group.

Further, Edgar has advised governments in Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, India, Jamaica, Japan and Mexico about the political, technological and social challenges of effective identity policies. He has contributed to reports for the World Bank, Omidyar Network and Centre for Global Development.

Edgar was the research coordinator of the influential LSE Identity Project on the UK’s proposals to introduce biometric identity cards; proposals that were scrapped following the 2010 General Election.

His book with Gus Hosein, Global Challenges for Identity Policies, was published by Palgrave in 2010 and has provided the academic grounding for subsequent research on digital identity systems around the world.