Andy Dudfield and Ross Haig join Full Fact in automated factchecking and communications

False and distorted information cause real harm to people and to society. It can harm everything from your health, to the health of your democracy. In a world with more information than ever, the risks are changing and getting bigger. Full Fact is changing too so that we can scale our work and reach more people.

We are excited to announce two new recruits to help lead this effort: Andy Dudfield, Chief Publishing Officer of the Office for National Statistics, and Ross Haig, Head of Communications at the Behavioural Insights Team.

Andy will become Full Fact’s Head of Product, leading our automated factchecking work jointly with Mevan Babakar, our existing Head of Automated Factchecking. Ross will become Head of Communications.

Andy has been one of the leaders of the team at ONS Digital which has taken a visionary approach to how statistics should be available on the web to serve the public and transformed its website from what was once described as a “national disgrace” to something that’s on its way to becoming world class. It’s their exceptional work that has made some of Full Fact’s automated factchecking possible.

This May Full Fact won the Google AI for Social Good Impact Challenge with our partners Africa Check, Chequeado, and the Open Data Institute. This gives us some funding as well as access to some of the world’s top AI experts, and to Google’s engineering and computing resources, to take our world-leading work on automated factchecking up to the next level.

Our ambition is to take the work we already do and use technology to speed it up and scale it out to make factchecking dramatically more effective. Here’s Mevan and Andy talking about the opportunities -

This work depends on public data being available and open. We and our partners aim to help open up statistical data to support greater public accountability worldwide. Andy’s experience as Chief Publishing Officer at the ONS has shown the potential and we’re excited about how we can do more with Andy on the team.

If you’re interested in our work on automated factchecking, Full Fact will soon be hiring another data scientist to join this team.

Ross joins us from the Behavioural Insights Team, where he has been Head of Communications since 2017 as the organisation has grown.

Ross helped build up the BI Team’s communications function and overhaul their branding and online presence. He previously worked in press, third sector and think tank communications.

Full Fact serves millions of people every year but we want to serve more. Ross’s appointment completes the expansion of our communications team so that we can increase our impact and there couldn’t be a more important time for Ross to be bringing his experience to our team.

We would like to thank all of Full Fact’s donors for your support to strengthen our team like this.