Boosting your success: support for analysts

There are many resources and opportunities available in the Analysis Function, whether you are a new entrant, senior leader, Departmental Director of Analysis (DDAN), or at any other stage of your government analysis career.  The Analysis Function User Journey Map is here to help you navigate and get the most out of being a member of the Analysis Function.

The map is modelled on the map of the London Underground. Start using the Career Journey Map by choosing your line, and the ‘station’ that most closely matches your situation. You can choose from the following options:

• I’m looking to develop my analysis skills
• I’m a leader in analysis

There are several essential pieces of guidance and practical resources available to support the Analysis Function community to produce high-quality analysis that informs decision making.

Some of the most important guidance includes:

• The Analysis Functional Standards guidance: provides guidance on all forms of analysis and helps analysts ensure their work is robust and supports well-informed decision-making – this ultimately leads to better outcomes for citizens
• The Analysis Function Guidance Hub: contains resources and reference material to guide all aspects of analytical work. The hub can be filtered to sort resources by profession, type of theme.
• The Aqua Book: sets out principles and best practices for producing high-quality, trustworthy analysis to support effective decision-making in the public sector.
• The Government Statistical Service (GSS) Code of Practice: sets the standards for producing official statistics that are trustworthy, high quality, and provide public value, to ensure confidence in government data and its use in decision-making
• The Green Book: is HM Treasury’s guidance for appraising and evaluating public policies, programmes, and projects to ensure value for money and informed decision-making across government.
• The Magenta Book: is HM Treasury’s central guidance for designing, conducting, and using evaluations in government to ensure evidence-based policy-making and improved public outcomes
• The Orange Book: outlines principles and frameworks to help UK government organisations identify, assess, and manage risks effectively as part of strategic planning and decision-making
• The Teal Book: contains guidance for directing and managing portfolios, programmes, and projects to ensure the successful and timely delivery of public policy and business objectives
• The Duck Book: provides a code quality assurance checklist for analytical projects, which helps ensure robust, reproducible, and well-documented analysis across departments.
• Intelligent transparency guidance: provides guidance on how transparency and clarity support public confidence in statistics and the organisations that produce them and how to minimise the risk of misinterpretation of statistics and data.

Visit the Analysis Function Support page for support and guidance around:

• evaluation,
• Reproducible Analytical Pipelines,
• communicating statistics and analysis,
• data linkage,
• innovation and champions networks.

There are many learning and development (L&D) opportunities covering technical and wider analytical skills. These are available through several sources, including:

• The Training Courses hub:  explore a range of courses and filter by topic, type, provider and location
• Analysis Function Learning Pathways: bring together analytical courses in a sequence to guide your learning on a range of topics, such as data acquisition, communicating insight, and times series
• The Technical Learning Curriculum: signposts to a significant number of technical learning modules that you may wish to register for.
• Civil Service Learning: has a variety of training courses that are tailored to your role profile, area of work, and professional status.

You can find jobs in government analysis using our pre-filtered link to the Civil Service Jobs website.

You may have to be signed into Civil Service Jobs to see all available vacancies.  If you are not yet a civil servant, you should visit Civil Service Careers page.

If you’re looking to find out more about careers in analysis or progress your career you can find more information by:

• Visiting our Careers page
• Exploring Analysis Function Career Framework: this supports analysts with career planning and provides guidance on typical responsibilities and knowledge needed for analytical roles within government departments.
• Read our Case studies: discover what good looks like by reading some of our excellence in government analysis case studies
• Check out Career stories: from practicing analysts across government
• Explore Role profiles and career pathways: to discover more information about typical role responsibilities, the core skills needed for a role, sample career paths, and a list of common behaviours and skill level definitions applicable to each role
• Sign up to support the Analysis Function by volunteering to work on some of our major events

Analysis groups, networks, and communities

As a government analyst, there are many different groups, networks, and communities across government that you can join.

Expand your professional network by getting to know other analysts in your area, developing contacts in specialist fields of analytical work, and linking up with other analysts who share a common interest. Find a community of analysts near you, or online.

Get support from your Analysis Function community

If you need advice on a starting or finishing a piece of work, want to sound out an opinion, find volunteers for research or testing, or a host of other things, you could consider asking your Analysis Function community.  We have 17,000 extremely knowledgeable community members with a range of experience and skills. So there’s a good chance that someone out there may be able to help, or who will know someone else who could.

There are several cross-government functions, that are designed to help develop skills, increase engagement, and make financial savings by creating cross-cutting expertise and providing support to all members, no matter where they work. Find out more on our about government functions and professions page.

Social media is a great place to find and build a community of analysts around you. LinkedIn is a great place to start, or you could post on X to reach analysts using the platform. If you tag the Analysis Function when you post, we’ll aim to repost your content and help you to reach more people. We’re also currently trialling AF Basecamp, and hope to be able to share it more widely soon.

You can also ask to put something in the Analysis Function monthly newsletter.

Support the Analysis Function community – development opportunities

By supporting your wider Analysis Function community, you can also access all manner of development opportunities, including:

• joining the sifting panel for the Analysis in Government (AiG) Awards
• volunteering to support events, including AiG Month – the UK’s largest L&D event for government analysts
• presenting at events including Analysis in Government Month
• becoming an AF Champion and representing your department at a cross-government level
• becoming an Analysis Function Standards Ambassador and supporting strong analytical standards across government

Contact the Analysis Function Central Team for more information on any of these opportunities.