Andy Gregory, Deputy Director, Data Services and Analytics, UK Home Office

What has been your path to power?

I spent the first 20 years of my career working in a variety of project, operational and strategy roles in the world of telecomms, initially at One2One (which became T-Mobile), then at Cable & Wireless, which was followed by a stint working at Vodafone in Romania for three years, then with Brightstar in Moscow for a year before returning to the UK to take a role with Vodafone Group. After 18 months at Vodafone, I moved to Sky for five years and eventually made the leap to my current role at the Home Office in Summer 2018. 

 

Over the course of my career, my roles have evolved from customer service operational planning, to Project Delivery to large-scale ERP deployments to process and performance transformations, all scattered with a healthy dose of integration, interfaces and databases. As the focus of industry and society has moved from large monolithic systems to end-to-end processes and more recently to integrated data, so has my career and I have been incredibly lucky to work with some of the very best and brightest technologists and some inspirational business leaders along the way.

What impact has the pandemic had on the role of data in your company/organisation?

Data has been at the centre of Home Office activities, across Intelligence, policy, reporting, security and automation initiatives, for some time. The pandemic’s principal impact was around immediacy of data, both in terms of new data being ingested, integrated and made available for analytics on an ad-hoc basis, and in terms of driving a lower latency in the data we already receive and process. It also enabled us to embrace innovative technologies and techniques as the risk appetite evolved in line with the external demand and landscape.

Does data now have a seat at the table during strategic discussions? If not, what will it take to get it there?

Yes, data is an integral part of all change planning at the Home Office, with checkpoints at the various investment gates to ensure that data has been considered, designed, and planned as part of the project. We’ve seen a genuine shift, from having to keep trying to be heard to being actively engaged as an integral part of solution design and delivery.

 

What are your key areas of focus for data and analytics in 2022?

Exploitation, exploitation, exploitation! Whether it’s supporting formation or performance monitoring of policy, delivering real-time intelligence and risking, driving low latency operational dashboards, or ensuring compliance with our data protection and equality duties, the appetite to consume data and data products and services has never been greater. In fact, that appetite extends across government, with HO functions wanting to consume data from other government departments and agencies, and vice versa. Developing capabilities that are both scalable and re-usable is key to meeting this increased appetite – as well as maturing and continually improving our existing product catalogue.

 

What key skills or attributes do you consider have contributed to your success in this role?

The critical skill is the ability to speak operations, policy and technology languages and act as a bridge between them to ensure that requirements are understood and technical constraints are accounted for. At the heart of this is understanding the outcome the business users are trying to achieve or the problem they are trying to solve.

 

How did you develop – and continue to develop – these skills or attributes?

Engaging widely and often, tailoring that engagement to the needs and knowledge level of the audience. It sounds easy, but it means a very busy diary and needs a real focus to keep prioritising as an activity. Listening to policy, operational and technology colleagues, as well as current and prospective suppliers, and playing back to them (ideally with a diagram) is key to building the trust needed. A mantra I have with the teams I work with is, “if I can’t draw it, then I don’t understand it”. I find that a drawing is more easily translated between the different worlds, too!

Is the data tech you have keeping pace with your goals and requirements? Are your providers leading or lagging behind your demands?

Up until this year, I think tech has been leading, helping shape our roadmap and understand what’s possible. I believe we’re at a tipping point now, though, where providers (notably in the cloud space) move from developing the next logical commodity service, to being driven to innovate for some of the more complex use cases, working much more in partnership. I’d speculate we’ll see this trend continue, at least until the “next big thing”, with customers ultimately starting to lead providers.

Andy Gregory
has been included in:
  • 100 Brands 2020 (EMEA)
  • 100 Brands 2021 (EMEA)
  • 100 Brands 2022 (EMEA)

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