Information Commissioner

John Edwards was appointed as the Information Commissioner for the United Kingdom in 2021 and took up the role in early 2022. The Information Commissioner’s Office oversees data protection legislation and is the principal regulator for artificial intelligence in the UK. The office has released several position and discussion papers on the application of the UK General Data Protection Regulation to LLMs, agentic AI, and automated decision making, among others.

The ICO also oversees Freedom of Information (FOI) law. In this four-year period, the Information Commissioner’s Office has introduced the first prioritisation criteria for FOI and have successfully increased monitoring and enforcement levels, by delivering historic levels of performance in the last 3 years after the clearance of the COVID-19 backlog.

Prior to his appointment, John was the Privacy Commissioner of New Zealand from 2014 to 2021. During that time, he chaired the international association of data regulators, now known as the Global Privacy Assembly.

John holds degrees in law and public policy and practised law, specialising in information law, and human rights, for twenty years in Wellington, New Zealand.