Cecilia Harvey is the Academy’s new Chief Operating Officer. Among her many professional accomplishments, she is a vocal advocate for, and author on, equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in technology and Chair and Founder of Tech Women Today, which seeks to advance women in technology. Here she reflects on the 2025 Progression Framework benchmarking exercise for science bodies and professional engineering institutions.
It seems like accountability is a theme for my career. As a writer on responsible and ethical technology, I am interested in accountability in artificial intelligence and data privacy – who uses our data, what for, and under what structure of governance? As the Academy’s Chief Operating Officer, a key focus is holding colleagues and the Academy to account – are we meeting our standards, are the checks and balances on decision-making effective, are our structures for finance, people, digital, grants processes, and our Fellowship robust?
While my role is inevitably largely about the ‘internal’ running of the Academy, I retain a passion for building more equitable and inclusive cultures in technology generally and therefore have a keen interest in the Academy’s ‘external’ impact. Critically, this includes how we support accountability for fostering greater EDI within the engineering profession.
Happily for me, EDI continues to be is a core value of the Academy and a principle that runs through our strategic plan for 2025 to 2030. Our work on EDI with the profession – represented by the Professional Engineering Institutions (PEIs) – centres around the EDI Progression Framework. Developed ten years ago in collaboration with the Science Council, the Progression Framework is a tool for professional bodies and learned societies to assess and monitor progress on EDI. It enables them to review practice in relation to ten areas of organisational activity against a five-level maturity model, ranging from level 0 (not started) to level 4 (embedding).
Our Progression Framework community, made up of representatives from the engineering and science professional bodies, meets regularly to explore opportunities and challenges and to continually improve the Progression Framework tool.
In 2017, 2021 and now 2025 we asked PEIs and Science Bodies to self-assess against the Progression Framework so that we could benchmark their results and consider progress in the profession as a whole. By benchmarking the progress of PEIs and how they are embedding EDI across their functions, we hope to inspire and motivate even further improvement.
I am delighted that this year saw more science and engineering organisations participating in the benchmarking exercise – 45 altogether, including Engineering UK and the Engineering Council who have been key supporters of the programme. I am also delighted to see the evidence of improvement and development.
We’ve seen overall sector scores increase in the organisational functions of accreditation of education and training, governance and leadership, communication, and employment. We’ve seen thoughtful and often sophisticated responses to the challenge of advancing EDI. Organisations recognise that diversifying engineering and science is both the right thing to do, and also imperative to the sustainability of our professions and to the effectiveness of our work.
The recommendation that particularly chimes for me is the need to “embed EDI into strategy, providing accountability and a framework for impact measurement”. EDI should be built into the planning, policies and practices of organisations – as core business rather than bolted on.
Of course, there are things that can be improved. EDI data collection among the science and engineering organisations is a mixed picture. As a technologist, I’m always acutely aware that good data – collecting it sensitively and thoroughly, processing it responsibly, using it to understand better and to plan for change – is key. Moreover, without good EDI data we’re unable to hold ourselves, and each other, to account. So, as we move to further develop and improve the content and structure of the Progression Framework in the coming year, we will also provide advice and guidance to support the professional bodies and learned societies to improve their EDI data, and to put it to effective use.
I was pleased to see that the Academy’s own score against the Progression Framework overall is between ‘progressing’ and ‘embedding’ – showing that while good work is being done, there is always more to do.
As a newbie to the Academy, finding out about the Progression Framework and supporting the launch of the new benchmarking reports has been an opportunity to get my hands on an important dimension of our EDI work. I look forward to seeing the programme grow and evolve, continuing to create accountability and support for the EDI efforts of the engineering and science professions.
The results of the 2025 Progression Framework benchmarking exercise are available to download now.