Richard Davis, chief data officer, Ofcom
Describe your career to date
I have spent most of my career working in organisations to help them build capabilities to understand, interrogate and create insights from data, developing a culture of data-driven decision making. A major aspect of this is working on transformation journeys to help companies understand that data-driven decisioning goes beyond the tools and platforms to a company-wide culture, where curiosity is encouraged and an understanding of statistics, and data literacy is required not just by the most tech-savvy of data people. By creating this culture, the teams foster an organisation with increased operational efficiency, improving employee and customer engagement and a long lasting value of developing innovative solutions.
My academic background is in applied mathematics and statistics. I have used advanced methods for multivariate statistics, machine learning, time series analytics and data pre-processing methods, such as wavelets in applications as diverse as economics, ecology, biochemistry, quantitative trading, portfolio optimisation, financial risk management, marketing, and telecommunications regulation.
Working for Lloyds Banking Group, I established the centre of excellence for analytics, setting up a hub and spoke model with a central team developing advanced methods for credit risk analysis, cyber threat and fraud detection. As the head of innovation, I used the data capabilities and expanded on these to develop cultural drivers for innovation and transformation, delivering over 100 products to support efficiency, enhanced risk protection and income growth. My final role in the group was setting up a series of products to monetise data held by Lloyds.
As Ofcom’s senior data leader, I advocate the role of data to deliver positive change across the organisation and preparing Ofcom for the future by ensuring we keep up with evolving technology, analytical approaches and scaling our systems. As head of the data profession, I support Ofcom’s data people to develop their careers and ensure they have the technical training to realise their ambitions. Strengthening capability and governance to provide Ofcom with the people, tools and mindset to achieve more with data.
What stage has your organisation reached on its data maturity journey?
Ofcom has set up the data innovation hub and has a number of spokes developing advanced analytical approaches using natural language processing, image and video classification, geospatial data science, dynamic dashboards for data visualisation, behavioural insights and predictive analytics.
However, with the growth of regulatory powers as online safety, video sharing platforms and network and information systems there is an increased need for more advanced data analytics. As such, we are in the process of launching a new data strategy in 2023, focusing on how we drive a cultural change to use data more effectively across the organisation and train all people to have a base level data literacy so we can all speak the same language.
Tell us about the data and analytics resources you are responsible for
The central data teams sit within the technology, data and innovation function and are responsible for leading Ofcom’s data strategy across our regulated sectors, driving forward and embedding innovative data use and practice. This team has hubs in London, Edinburgh and Manchester and has grown nearly 10-fold in the past couple of years as the need for more advanced data has become clear. Beyond this, the chief data officer is responsible for enabling all people across Ofcom to use data as effectively, efficiently and safely as possible to ensure all decisions we make are based on the best data, information and analytics as possible.
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