My career story: Sian Rasdale
Job title and department or organisation
Sian is Chief Statistician and Deputy Director at the Centre for Data and Analysis in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
Grade
Sian works at Senior Civil Service 1 (SCS1) grade.
Profession and entry route
Sian is a member of the Government Statistical Group (GSG).
Sian entered the Civil Service at Executive Officer (EO) grade through a direct recruitment drive.
Sian’s career path
I studied economics at university and in my final year I chose more econometrics and numbers-based modules. After graduating I got a job with GlaxoSmithKline working in logistics. I then moved to Scotland and started looking for work. I ended up doing some casual work before I found a role within the Scottish Government in 2002 on a fixed term contract as a Statistical Officer, which is equivalent to Executive Officer (EO) grade. I worked on land surveys and public sector statistics looking at vacant and derelict land in Scotland. I still remember how we would receive data by fax from Local Authorities and had to input it into Excel. After 18 months I was promoted to Higher Executive Officer (HEO). Shortly afterwards I moved to working in the Chief Statistics Office at Senior Executive Officer (SEO) grade and worked on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2006.
In 2008 I had a temporary promotion to the Head of Equalities and Poverty. In the summer of 2008, I became a permanent Grade 7 in this role. At the time I was seven months pregnant so shortly after this I went on maternity leave. I returned and moved to be the Head of the Labour Market Analysis (Grade 7) and had another two periods of maternity leave in quite close succession. During my time with the Scottish Government, they also funded me to do an MSc in applied statistics.
In 2014 I gained promotion to Senior Statistics Advisor (Grade 6) in the Department for International Development (DFID), still based in Scotland. I then had a temporary promotion in 2016 to become the Head of the Finance and Performance department (SCS1), which became a permanent role in early 2017.
In April 2020 I became the new Head of Evidence Department (SCS1) in DFID. This was a new division bringing together the central evaluation functions and concentrated on social research rather than statistics.
When we merged with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) my role evolved again. In December 2021 I became the Head of Global Science, where I ran a network of 140 staff in 70 countries jointly with the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) (now DSIT). I led professionals, policy, and diplomacy work.
In February 2023 I started my current role as Chief Statistician in the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), going back to my origins of statistics. I currently work full time but have worked part time to juggle childcare earlier in my career.
I have always been badged to the GSG despite entering more Government Social Researcher (GSR) type roles later in my career. I have been lucky to gain a breadth of experience across GSG and GSR. I made sure I kept doing technical work on a regular basis so that I could show evidence to keep my GSG badging. I also made sure I regularly got involved with statistics work. I kept up to date with what was going on within statistics which made it easier to fall back into GSG roles. I did explore badging to the GSR too but decided against it because of the multi-disciplinary nature of my SCS1 role.
The flowchart shows Sian’s career progression from university degree to current role. It shows the step-by-step journey through the departments, roles and grades Sian has worked in to achieve her current grade and experience. Enlarge the flowchart.
I am only three months into my role, but a huge part of my job is promoting the benefits of analysis, statistics, using numbers in everything we do in FCDO. The concept of using data in decision making is still something that is new to FCDO.
An interesting piece of work I am working on is how do we use data and analysis in a crisis response.
I am quite new to my current role, so I want to stay in this post for the moment. I really want to see an FCDO that is truly informed by data and data literate.
I am proud of the fact I have managed to get into my current role, which is a job I always wanted, despite not being based in London and all whilst juggling a family. I live four hours from my office and I work hard at making it all work. When you live far from the office and have family commitments to juggle you have to think about how you can be more visible, and make a conscious effort to network and engage with colleagues. I have learnt how to be purposeful in how I use my office time.
One of the most challenging times in my recent career was the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic the merger of FCO and DFID. Both things happened in close succession and it meant I was leading a large department with staff who just felt a lot of stress. They were dealing with so much uncertainty on a big scale on both a personal and job security perspective. It was hard to manage and took its toll.
Sian’s advice
Do jobs you enjoy. You will always perform best when you enjoy the work.
This career story was published on Tuesday 1 August 2023.