Blog

From Lunar House to Broadcasting House: My secondment to the BBC

Earlier this year, I stepped into the big and busy BBC newsroom, moving on secondment from the Home Office. Over the next few months, I worked as BBC Verify’s consultant statistician, fact-checking claims in heated election debates, ‘filing copy’ on interesting stories, and advising journalists about statistical best practice and presentation. Part of my role […]

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Automated data visualisation best practice in R: afcharts release

What is afcharts? afcharts is an R package for creating accessible charts. afcharts implements the Analysis Function data visualisation guidance. What does afcharts do? afcharts automates setting accessible colours, fonts and text sizing, axes labelling, and much more.  Currently, functions are available for styling ggplot2 plots. afcharts takes your charts from the ggplot2 defaults to […]

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Lessons I’ve learned from managing change

In my time at ONS, I’ve led some ambitious changes which have highlighted the fact that whilst crucial, change can sometimes be challenging. There are a few lessons I’ve learned along the way which I hope will help colleagues through managing change. Put people at the heart of change and put yourself in their shoes […]

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How to drive innovation

Analysts across the civil service face significant pressures to deliver demanding analysis at pace, which can get in the way of trying new things and making improvements to the way we work. In support of this year’s One Big Thing, Adrian Richards (HM Revenue & Customs) and Matt Gurden (Deputy Government Actuary) were joined by […]

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Ensuring Trust – My secondment to the BBC

Masuma Ahmed blogs about her experience on secondment to the BBC.

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Communicating the quality of ethnicity data

We really enjoyed our session at the 11th European Conference on Quality in Official Statistics (Q2024) conference in Estoril, Portugal (Greater Lisbon region). The Equality Data and Analysis Division in the Cabinet Office delivered a presentation on how we communicate the quality of ethnicity data. Here is a summary of our thinking. At the heart […]

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Celebrating the GSR Conference 2024

“On Friday 21 June 2024, the Government Social Research (GSR) profession came together to celebrate the work of social researchers across government. The day was a resounding success, with 560 delegates joining in person, 414 joining us online, and several members enjoying the day together via satellite venues in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Newport. Professor Catherine […]

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Finding ‘good’ numbers: my secondment to the BBC 

Megan Riddell blogs about her experience on secondment to the BBC.

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Innovation starts here: Analysis in Government Month 2024

Analysis in Government Month 2024 begins!

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People-first approach: developing the data strategy for the Office of Rail and Road (ORR)

Vikas Dhawan blogs about the development of the data strategy for the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).

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