Reproducible Analytical Pipeline (RAP) champions

Purpose

The RAP champion network has been set up to support the effective implementation of reproducible analysis across government. By promoting reproducible analysis, champions support the Analysis Function and enable efficiencies.

Role of a champion

RAP champions are expected to:

• help others understand why and how they implemented RAP in their department and why it worked for them
• share code via platforms like GitHub so that others can learn from and adapt what has been done
• make time to respond to feedback
• allow others to shadow their team as they work through a RAP implementation, ideally supporting at least two shadowing opportunities a year
• quantify the benefits of their RAP implementation by keeping track of the time and resources saved by the implementation
• help others understand how to pick a suitable project for RAP development (the RAP Companion has some useful guidance on this)
• promote the work they have done by seeking out opportunities to present their RAP project at events (particularly those RAP projects that are actively delivering efficiencies)
• mentor people new to RAP by giving advice and being a critical friend – champions can get help setting this up by emailing gsshelp@statistics.gov.uk
• peer review at least one RAP project a year
• support the RAP champion community by attending RAP champion meetings, sharing findings and joining in the discussion on the #rap_collaboration channel on the gov-data-science slack workspace
• build their RAP champion role into their personal objectives
• plan for a replacement if they cannot continue their RAP champion role
• keep the contact list of RAP champions updated (champions will be a sent a link to an editable Google document)
• help to build and promote RAP guidance

Membership

The RAP champion network is open to anyone in government who is working on, or considering, reproducible analytical pipelines.

To be a RAP champion, you need to commit to the role outlined on this page.  This may require you to get permission from your line manager or Head of Profession.

The network also accepts members who are interested in RAP work, but are not champions. However, wherever possible we would encourage full champion membership in order to grow the community and support reproducible analysis.

Benefits

The RAP champions network is a vibrant, cross-government community.  It provides a space for analysts to share their experience, learn from others and support the wider analysis community.

On a personal level, being a RAP champion is a great corporate objective as it is an important “big picture” contribution to the civil service and a significant development opportunity.

Scope

All work on reproducible analysis in government is in scope.  Lots of work to date has been done in the context of automating the production of official statistics, but other analysts using reproducible analysis are welcome to join and share their experience.

List of RAP champions (Google doc).

If you can’t access Google docs please let us know by emailing gsshelp@statistics.gov.uk

October 2019

The third RAP meetup took place on Thursday 10 October 2019 at the Office for National Statistics in Pimlico. Presentations from the event.

Introduction and Recap

Martin Ralphs

Revisiting RAP Levels

Joshua Halls, Alexander Newton – Are there additional products we need to communicate the level of RAP?

In this discussion we considered what the core principles of RAP are and how these suggest certain types of tool use. The network agreed that they would comment further on the ideas presented, which propose some changes to the current thinking of the champions.

The DfE Quality Assurance Framework: Re-platforming Models into R

Nicky Brassington (DfE) – How do we perform and communicate quality assurance when re-platforming models?

Quality Assurance (QA) of data science projects

Martin Ralphs – Results from the QA of Data Science survey

QA of code guidance

Joshua Halls presented his work on developing quality assurance guidance for coding, including a link to the GitHub repository for this work.

What do we do now workshop

In this discussion, we revisited the objectives of the network and discussed how we should work together and coordinate going forwards. We recommended that a steering group be set up, drawn from the main network, and that we use the model of Task and Finish groups to address specific requirements.  Draft terms of reference for discussion.

We also set out a draft work plan to develop the network and meet its objectives.

May 2019

The second RAP meetup took place on Tuesday 28 May 2019 at the Office for National Statistics in Pimlico, London.

RAP perspectives from NHS Services Scotland

Anna Price, David Caldwell, Jack Hannah

Anna Price – Reproducible Analytical Pipelines in NHS Scotland

David Caldwell – NHS Scotland’s first RAP project

Jack Hannah – Scaling RAP in NHS Scotland

Networking and show and tell

Matt Kerlogue – Using govdown to make a map of civil servants

Towards a minimum viable product for RAP (workshop session)

In this workshop, we considered the minimum requirements for a reproducible pipeline. We looked at four themes: workflow, tools, standards and skills.  For each, we listed elements that we thought were essential, nice to have and the pinnacle of good practice. The results of the discussion are summarised in these diagrams.

Champions have already thought a lot about what makes a RAP workflow, and what must be in it. These papers set out our thinking to date.

NHS Services Scotland paper on RAP levels

Duncan Garmonsway – Levels of RAP and getting started

Levels of RAP discussion on the RAP development website

ONS Data Access Platform team RAP Good Practices cheat sheet

Our RAP web presence and how to use it most effectively

Duncan Garmonsway (Government Digital Service)

Using testing in RAP

Theodore Manassis (Office for National Statistics)

Comparing civil services around the world: using RAP principles to process and model messy data

Matt Kerlogue (Cabinet Office)

October 2018

RAP champions got together for the first time on 16 October 2018 at the Office for National Statistics in Pimlico, London.    This is what we talked about.

RAP blockers and solutions workshop session

Matt Dray and Matt Gregory, Government Digital Service

This paper summarises what we said in the workshop discussion.  It formed the basis of a presentation to GSS Heads of Profession in early December.

RAP in DfE – discovery and how we scale

Laura Selby, Department for Education

Some additional background from DfE.

Package review via ROpenSci

Seb Fox, Public Health England

Spreadsheet munging strategies

Duncan Garmonsway, Government Digital Service

Python RAP

Max Unsted, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

Blog posts

The Government Digital Service have published two very useful blog posts about RAP:

Reproducible Analytical Pipelines

Transforming the process of producing official statistics

The Office for Statistics Regulation have also blogged about RAP:

A robot by any name?

Alex Hayes has a nice blog about software testing in R.

Guides and courses

RAP Companion: a guide to building a reproducible analytical pipeline.

Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAP) using R: an online course that goes alongside the RAP Companion. It introduces the key ideas in reproducible analysis and provides links to other resources to support you in implementing RAP.

Choose tools and infrastructure to make better use of your data: Government Digital Service guidance about choosing tools and infrastructure that are flexible, scalable, sustainable and secure.

Communication across the network

Slack channel for RAP champions (#rap_collaboration). You will need to sign up to the gov-data-science workspace on Slack to join this channel. The best way to make use of this channel is to change the channel notification settings to receive notifications for “all new messages”.

RAP resources on GitHub

The network has a dedicated RAP resources site on GitHub and associated GitHub repository that you can contribute to directly. This is a place for the community to publish materials that it finds useful. In particular, resources that include live code can be published on the GitHub site.

If  you want to look at some examples of where RAP has already been implemented in government take a look at our list of RAP examples (Google sheet). You can add a new example to the list with this Google Form.