What has been your path to power?
One thread running through my career is data for public good. I was lucky as an early job to join an Oxford University research group doing some of the first work with government administrative data, modelling and estimating poverty and deprivation levels, which evolved into the Index of Multiple Deprivation used to target billions of pounds of spending.
Later, I helped launch a spin-out data, analysis and tech company from the research group, and over a decade we worked with hundreds of public sector organisations across the UK and internationally. Gradually, I became more involved with government work, advising on opening-up and using data, and then applied to ONS to lead the Data Science Campus.
A second thread through my career is exploring the art of the possible. Of course, all organisations are under pressure to deliver immediate results, but it’s critical that we also keep the next things in view, horizon scanning and understanding the next opportunities. My MSc and PhD were in AI and Computational Neuroscience, evolving robots to play football (among other things), and I’ve brought this exploratory focus to the Campus where we have a programme to research the value of new data sources, tools and techniques.
A final thread through my career is collaboration and partnerships. No one organisation or sector has a monopoly on talent and we all need to get smarter at working across organisational and sector boundaries. The Campus has partnerships across government, academia and industry, for example, running a hub in the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, and I’m particularly excited by the potential for joint programmes and secondments with industry and academia.
In 2022, I moved to the Department of Levelling-up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) as its first chief data officer, and director of the new spatial data unit to support levelling-up.
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