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Lien Bailey, Chief Data Officer, IPO UK

Lien Bailey, Chief Data Officer, IPO UK

Describe your career to date

I left university with a degree in Computer Information Systems Design (bit of a mouthful) but didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I did what any graduate would do, I applied for the most exciting company at the time – this was Diageo. I did this but felt something was missing. That’s when I found out about consulting – it would be the kick-start over two decades of working across private and public sector, as well as travelling across the world.

This has provided a breadth of experience which allows me to perform my current role. I am proud I started out as an Oracle developer and worked my way out of development to lead teams and then lead engagements in the diverse area of information and data. I was lucky enough to have plenty of experience in unstructured and structed data, this allows me to see problems through different lenses.

The big change was when I moved from a consultant role to working as a client, this gave me the inside track on how the relationship of client and supplier should work to achieve common outcomes.

What stage has your organisation reached on its data maturity journey?

The IPO has embarked on a digital transformation journey, and we are due to deliver phase one deliverables by the end of 2023. This will deliver the new digital capabilities for our customers to apply for a patent, we will then follow up with trademarks and designs as part of phase two. Our data maturity will be improved vastly as part of this programme.

Tell us about the data and analytics resources you are responsible for

I manage a team of over 20, consisting of data architects, data engineers, data governors, data stewards and data modellers. Most of our staff are based in or near Newport, Wales and we have a couple of remote workers due to the difficulties of finding scarce data skills. I also lead the data workstream on our OneIPO programme, where there are an additional 30 partner resources.

What challenges do you see for data in the year ahead that will have an impact on your organisation and on the industry as a whole?

For the next few years, I foresee a data skills shortage (we are growing our own), the cost of living crisis/versus civil service pay (we are utilising allowances where possible), and the need for hybrid working expectations (we negotiate on a case by case basis) that will impact our organisation and industry. We cannot compete with the private sector, so we try to sell the softer benefits, including pension and lifestyle, and are requesting pay band reviews.

Have you set out a vision for data? If so, what is it aiming for and does it embrace the whole organisation or just the data function?

We have a data strategy that sets out our vision and roadmap for data across the whole of the IPO, our core pillars concentrate on preparing our staff, governing our assets and exploiting our data. We also support transforming the way the IPO will deliver our services, but are mindful we align with cross government initiatives.

Have you been able to fix the data foundations of your organisation, particularly with regard to data quality?

In all organisations, data quality is often cited as a problem to fix. The data workstream that was set up within our transformation programme was there to resolve many of our problems. Within the workstream, we knew we needed data tooling to support some of the larger items of work which we also implemented data stewardship and data governance.

Lien Bailey
has been included in:

100 Brands 2023 (EMEA)