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7. Megan Lee-Devlin, Chief Executive, Central Digital & Data Office, UK Government

Describe your career to date

I started my career at IBM as an Analyst, followed by completing the ACA exams at PwC before moving to McKinsey where I consulted to large scale organisations on digital, data, and organisational transformation topics across a variety of industries. I joined the Cabinet Office in 2021 as Director of Strategy and Transformation for the Digital, Data and Technology function, and was subsequently made Chief Executive of the Central Digital & Data Office, responsible for leadership of the 27,000-strong community of data and technology leaders across government departments. As of March, I am moving to a new government department to be closer to the coal face, leading up transformation, digital and data, and operational services.

How are you developing the data literacy of your organisation, including the skills of your data teams and of your business stakeholders?

In leading the Central Digital and Data Office, I focused on three key communities for data skills. Firstly, building data confidence and literacy for senior government senior business leaders, through a bespoke programme built in conjunction with LSE and A.Political, as part of a commitment agreed with all departments to see 90% of senior civil servants upskilled by 2025. Secondly, I focused on widening the roles within the data profession and bolstering access to data talent. With the help of the brilliant data team in CDDO, the CDO Council and many colleagues in departments, we worked to increase the data roles in the capability framework, recognising the many new and evolving jobs in this space (such as data ethicists), ensure data roles could be paid a premium through the Digital and Data Pay Framework, and created a wide range of early career talent programmes (such as agreeing and executing against a commitment to see 3,000 new apprenticeships into the function by 2025). Thirdly, I worked with colleagues across government to build data literacy amongst all civil servants, through the One Big Thing initiative which saw 40% of civil servants undertake training, amounting to 700,000 learning hours.