Sid Ryan
Researcher, administrator, FOI practitioner. Hereford.
I’m a public-interest researcher and administrator, currently working in NHS laboratory administration. Most of my work comes down to the same question asked of different systems: how does this actually work, where does it fail, and what would it take to fix it? I’ve asked it of hospital contracts, council FOI processes and, lately, my own software.
I know the Freedom of Information Act from both sides. As an investigative journalist at the Bristol Cable I used it as a reporting tool and took six cases to the Information Tribunal. Then I crossed the desk: as Huntingdonshire District Council’s information-governance officer I answered requests instead of sending them, and took the council’s FOI compliance from 50% to 95%. My research has mostly been about money in the NHS; the work was covered in the Guardian, the BMJ and on Newsnight. It’s collected on the Research, FOI and Builds pages.
Currently
Looking for: operations, research, data or information-governance work in or around Hereford, somewhere I can own a process and make it measurably better. Hereford, Bristol, or genuinely hybrid.
Hereford, UK
Where I’ve worked
| NHS diagnostics laboratory, Bristol (current) | Administrative officer, fetal-medicine administration. |
| North Bristol NHS Trust | Medical secretary, epilepsy specialist-nurse team. |
| Huntingdonshire District Council | Information-governance officer (FOI and data protection). |
| Centre for Health and the Public Interest | Health-policy research and report writing. |
| The Bristol Cable | Investigative journalist, co-operative community newspaper. |
| Request Initiative | Budget management and event coordination. |
| Centre for Investigative Journalism | Research support and legal case preparation. |