Ideas@theHouse: July 2024

Ideas@theHouse

presented by

Her Excellency the Honourable
Margaret Beazley AC KC, Governor of NSW

“W x 3 — The World Wide Web (we weaved)”

Julie Inman Grant
eSafety Commissioner
Australian Government

Date: Thursday, 18 July 2024, 6.30 – 8.00 pm AEST
Venue: Face-to-face (by invitation for Society members) and live streaming from Government House Sydney
Registration: Society members will receive an invitation to register for a face-to-face place.  No registration is required for the live stream (link to follow)
Entry: No charge
All are welcome to the live stream

Summary: Commissioner Inman Grant worked at the intersection of technology, policy, and social justice before there was an Internet in the US Congress, and then at Microsoft in Washington DC in the early 1990s. She fondly refers to this as, “technology policy ground zero” when the Internet was on the cusp and policymakers did not know how to grapple with this new phenomenon. After 22 years in the tech sector, this “poacher turned gamekeeper” became the first global online safety regulator. Arguably, policymakers and regulators are still working out how they reconcile the global Internet with national laws, fight the wealth, stealth, and power of the global technology sector, and effectively help keep their citizens safe online. She’ll take you on a journey of how she has navigated the albatross that technology has driven and pose questions about where we need to go tomorrow.

Julie Inman Grant is Australia’s eSafety Commissioner. In this role, Julie leads the world’s first government regulatory agency committed to keeping its citizens safer online.

Julie has extensive experience in the non-profit and government sectors and spent two decades working in senior public policy and safety roles in the tech industry at Microsoft, Twitter, and Adobe.

The Commissioner’s career began in Washington DC, working in the US Congress and the non-profit sector before taking on a role at Microsoft. Julie’s experience at Microsoft spanned 17 years, serving as one of the company’s first and longest-standing government relations professionals, ultimately in the role of Global Director for Safety & Privacy Policy and Outreach. At Twitter, she set up and drove the company’s policy, safety, and philanthropy programs across Australia, New Zealand & Southeast Asia and drove APAC-wide Government Relations for Adobe.

As Commissioner, Julie served on the Australian MyGov User Audit Panel and the Independent Advisory Board of the Technology Policy Design Centre.  She served as co-founder and inaugural chair of the Global Online Safety Regulators Network and is a long-serving Board Member of the WePROTECT Global Alliance. The Commissioner also serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Coalition for Digital Safety and on their Governance Steering Committee on Building and Defining the Metaverse. Under her leadership, eSafety has joined forces with the White House Gender Policy Council and the Government of Denmark on the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Harassment and Abuse.

In 2021, Julie oversaw significant increases in the eSafety office’s budget, increased staffing levels, and launched the global Safety by Design initiative. As Commissioner, she has led work to stand up novel and world-first regulatory regimes under the new Online Safety Act 2021, with implementation of a sweeping new set of reforms beginning on 23 January 2022. Commissioner Inman Grant was reappointed for a further 5-year term by the Australian Government in January 2022.

The Commissioner was recently named one of Australia’s most influential women by the Australian Financial Review and a leading Australian in Foreign Affairs by the Sydney Morning Herald.  In 2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Apolitical appointed the Commissioner as one of the #Agile50, the world’s most influential leaders revolutionising government. 

More information can be found at www.esafety.gov.au.