About OFE - Biogs

 Graham Taylor - Chief Executive

Graham Taylor is Chief Executive of OpenForum Europe, and a co-founder of the organisation. A regular speaker at international conferences, he was invited by the European Commission and Portuguese Presidency to respond to the Declaration made at the Ministerial eGovernment Conference in Lisbon in 2007, and succeeded in getting 27 other European organisations from the 'Open Community' to be co-signatories to that Statement.

With some 30 years of experience in the ICT industry, prior to OFE Graham Taylor was a Director at ICL, most recently as Managing Director of the Smart Card business, but with spells as its Software Business Development Manager, and Director of The Solution Centre, ICL's centre for the management of complex integration projects.

Bob Blatchford - Chief Operating Officer

 Bob has spent over thirty years in the IT Industry, 23 of them within the insurance sector. Whilst with Lloyd’s of London he worked with emerging technologies, cross discipline projects and commercialisation of internal IT services.

 Bob has held a number of senior management roles during his career, with responsibility for IT, telecommunications, business development, strategic planning, electronic trading, commercial activities and the development and introduction of Internet based services for markets. He has managed the delivery of a number of successful major projects for the London insurance market.

 Bob also has had a long-term involvement and strong interest in the introduction of e-commerce and e-trading initiatives in the London Insurance Market. He was a founding member of both LIMNET (London Insurance Market Network) and LNSG (Lloyd’s Network Steering Group) and has been active on a number of national and international committees encouraging and enabling the development of business to business e-commerce and standards.

Basil Cousins - Director

Basil Cousins is co-founder and Director of OpenForum Europe (OFE). Over the past two years, he has led the ODF campaign in Europe and is responsible for developing the role of OFE in the UK. A Secretary to the OFE Executive Council and OFE Board, he also provides the secretariat for the highly successful OFE SIGs, Basil has had 40 years experience in the ICT industry.

As DP Manager of Costain, he set up and ran Computel, an ICL based timesharing bureau owned by Costain and Mowlem. As Head of Software Engineering, ICL ASD he was instrumental in the foundation of X/Open and the publication in June 1984 of the first portability guide based on AT&T Unix System V. He then headed up Olivetti UK Public Relations until 1994 when as a member of the CBI London Region Council, he launched LondonLInk in association with Nomura, Lloyds of London, Bird & Bird, Citigroup and others. He is Honorary Secretary of the Ethical Panel of the Information Technologists Panel and Honorary Treasurer of the Real Time Club.

Sachiko Muto - Director

 Sachiko Muto joined OFE in 2007 and serves as Director with responsibility for government relations. Sachiko has over ten years of experience working in Brussels public affairs. With degrees in Political Science from the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics, she is currently a guest researcher at TU Delft where she takes an interest in the social and political implications of technological change.

Paul Meller - Director Research & Communications

Paul Meller joined OFE in May 2010 after a 20 year-long career in journalism. He helps OFE get its message out to reporters and uses his writing skills to hone the organization's message to policymakers as well as to OFE members, partners and collaborators from the IT industry. He has also been instrumental in setting up Openforum Academy, a think tank and  sister organization to OFE. Prior to joining OFE Paul spent 15 years in Brussels covering European Union competition, internal market, intellectual property, trade and economic policy for The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, the Dow Jones news agency and specialist publishers International Data Group, the European Voice and Science Business Publishing. Before moving to Brussels Paul wrote about the birth of capitalism in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. As a freelance journalist he traveled to Warsaw, Moscow, Budapest, Prague, Kiev and Sarajevo between 1989 and 1996. His articles appeared in The Guardian, The Sunday Times and USA Today newspapers and in British business magazines. He started his career in journalism working for trade magazines in the advertising industry, and freelancing for British tabloids, The Daily Mirror and Today.

Maël Brunet - Policy Analyst

Maël joined OFE in 2012 as a Policy Analyst based in Brussels. Prior to that he completed an internship at the European Commission working on public procurement auditing. He is a graduate from the European Institute of ULB and Sciences Po Lille where he specialised in European economics. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Politics and Economics at the University of Kent. He is bilingual in English and French, has a working knowledge of Spanish and a basic understanding of Dutch.

 Shane Coughlan 

Rod Norman - Webmaster