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 Government 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 up to date
• 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.

Meet up three: 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 can be accessed by emailing gsshelp@statistics.gov.uk.

Items

Revisiting RAP levels

Joshua Halls and Alexander Newton discussed if there additional products we need to communicate the level of RAP. The network agreed that they would comment further on the ideas presented.

The Department for Education Quality Assurance Framework: re-platforming models into R

Nicky Brassington gave a presentation about how we perform and communicate quality assurance when re-platforming models.

Quality Assurance (QA) of data science projects

Martin Ralphs presented the 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 (email: gsshelp@statistics.gov.uk if you’d like to know more about this).

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. 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 and a draft work plan to develop the network can be accessed by emailing gsshelp@statistics.gov.uk.

Meet up two: May 2019

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

Items

RAP perspectives from NHS Services Scotland

Anna Price – Reproducible Analytical Pipelines in NHS Scotland
David Caldwell – NHS Scotland’s first RAP project
Jack Hannah – Scaling RAP in NHS Scotland

If you would like to know more about any of these, please email: gsshelp@statistics.gov.uk

Networking and show and tell

Matt Kerlogue talked about using govdown to make a map of civil servants.

Workshop session: towards a minimum viable product for RAP

In this workshop 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.

Champions have already thought a lot about what makes a RAP workflow, and what must be in it.

The results of the discussion and papers setting out our thinking to date can be accessed by emailing gsshelp@statistics.gov.uk.

Titles of the papers available to access:

• 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

The RAP web presence and how to use it effectively

This discussion focused on the RAP web presence on github.

Duncan Garmonsway from the Government Digital Service talked about using testing in RAP (email: gsshelp@statistics.gov.uk if you’d like to know more about this).

Theodore Manassis from the Office for National Statistics presented on comparing civil services around the world: using RAP principles to process and model messy data (paper available on request by emailing gsshelp@statistics.gov.uk)

Meet up one: October 2018

RAP champions got together for the first time on 16 October 2018 at the Office for National Statistics in Pimlico, London. Papers from these sessions can be accessed by emailing gsshelp@statistics.gov.uk.

Items

RAP blockers and solutions: workshop session

Matt Dray and Matt Gregory from the Government Digital Service delivered this session.

RAP in the Department for Education: discovery and how we scale

Laura Selby delivered this session.

Package review via ROpenSci

Seb Fox from Public Health England delivered this session.

Spreadsheet munging strategies

Duncan Garmonsway, Government Digital Service

Python RAP

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

If you do not know who the RAP champion is in your department and you are not sure how to find out, email gsshelp@statistics.gov.uk.

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 blog, with a good post about testing statistical software.

Guides and courses

The Duck book: Quality assurance of code for analysis and research

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 government 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”.

GSS RAP resources

Access the RAP articles and guidance originally hosted on GitHub.

Examples of RAP projects from UK government organisations are listed below.  We have included links to the publications they produce and the pipeline code where these are publicly available.