The push to unify and better exploit rail data across the industry has taken a major step forward with the appointment of a new Head of Integrated Data Strategy, working jointly across Greater Anglia and GBRX.
The new cross‑industry role—filled by Leon Kong—is designed to bring together historically fragmented datasets and make them more accessible and usable. The goal: empower operators to deliver more targeted, meaningful improvements for passengers and staff ahead of the creation of Great British Railways (GBR).
Kong’s appointment strengthens an ongoing programme of collaboration between publicly owned operators and GBRX, aimed at scaling data‑driven solutions that have already proven successful at a local level.
Data‑led innovation already delivering results
Publicly owned operators have recently rolled out several high‑impact, data‑centric initiatives, including:
- South Eastern Railway – AI‑equipped on‑train monitoring cameras that detect faults early, preventing disruption before it occurs.
- LNER – A machine‑learning tool that identifies services most at risk of delay, helping teams intervene before problems escalate.
- Northern, Network Rail and British Transport Police – Deployment of drones to reduce trespassing incidents and minimise delays.
These initiatives exemplify the type of innovation GBRX aims to scale by improving the way organisations share data, expertise and practical methods.
A track record of turning data into real‑world improvements
Leon Kong brings significant hands‑on experience from Greater Anglia, where he has helped make passenger count data more accessible to frontline teams and planners. This recently enabled operators to optimise event‑day timetables—including football matchdays—adjusting train timings and interchange flows to reduce crowding without requiring extra trains or resources.
Leon Kong, Head of Data and Innovation at Greater Anglia and Head of Integrated Data Strategy at GBRX, said:
“By working across both an operator and GBRX, the aim is to help strong local delivery scale across the industry, sharing and rolling out best practices rather than reinventing approaches at a local level.”
“This work will benefit operators in the short term, enabling them to use previously fragmented data sets to deliver direct improvements for their customers, and looking ahead put GBR in position to make the best possible use of the vast amount of data it will hold.”
“My role focuses on tackling the structural blockers that arise from fragmentation across organisations, systems, and data. In practice, that often means improving the discoverability of data held across multiple stakeholders, untangling the commercial and data ownership constraints, and enabling teams to use practical approaches to improve data quality. This includes the use of AI tools that can refine unstructured, text-based operational information into decision-ready structured data.”
“To truly unlock the potential of AI and to deploy it widely across the railway, we must quickly understand whether the underlying data is actually usable in practise. Closer working, sharing resources and best practices across organisations will enable us to scale up important initiatives that benefit the passenger and taxpayer quickly and efficiently.”
Image credit: Greater Anglia
