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Setting up a smart speaker for my grandmother

My grandmother (granma) is currently resident in a renablement home. On Friday 13 March we were told because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, all visitors were banned until further notice. My mother had mentioned my granma was loving the Alexa speakers in the social areas of the home so I rang them to ask if […]

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School’s out for now – but don’t panic!

Sometime at the end of January 2019 I was on a train travelling home from London when I tried to call my husband. I was 20 weeks pregnant with my second child, on my way back from a meeting. He didn’t answer. I didn’t think anything of it as he often doesn’t answer. But then […]

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Hidden in plain sight

Two years ago I was nearly killed in a car crash. It was through no fault of my own – a bus decided to pick a fight with my car. This left me with a spine broken in several places and severe spinal damage which will stay with me for life. Along with the health […]

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My journey as an immigrant

Since starting in Migration and Borders Analysis (MBA), I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on my own status as an immigrant. At the MBA awayday at the Migration Museum in Lambeth, we were urged to think about migration stories. It surprised me that I’ve never even considered mine! So, as any good social […]

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The Civil Service Hearing and Visual Disability Networks

Hi, my name is Simon Skerritt. I work in the Analysis Function in the Civil Service and I am proud to be part of the Analysis Function Data and Insight (D&I) Group. In 2017, I founded the Civil Service Hearing and Visual Disability Networks, which have become sub networks of the Civil Service Disability Network […]

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The GSS User Engagement Strategy – a lot can happen in three weeks!

Since our last blog, we’ve been busy speaking with statistical producers, promoting the strategy at the Presentation and Dissemination symposium, initiating a user engagement champions network and starting discussions on Slack. We’ve also got a very long list of users to speak to from a wide range of backgrounds, including the media, charities, parliamentary teams and […]

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Demystifying the Best Practice and Impact team (BPI): my secondment experience

Why did I participate? When I learnt about this two-week secondment opportunity with the BPI team around the corner (literally!), I wanted to join almost instantly. Before this experience, I had a vague idea of the division’s functions and its place in the organisational structure at the Office for National Statistics. I decided that a […]

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Two weeks with Best Practice and Impact

I was first introduced to the idea of secondments with the Best Practice and Impact (BPI) team during my GSS Induction training, and I was immediately intrigued. I had no experience of a stats team who didn’t produce any statistical releases, and I was determined to find out how that worked.   I quickly realised […]

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Launch of the Data Catalogue

A cross government initiative led by the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) has launched a Data Catalogue. This covers a wide range of data sources related to EU exit such as trade, tariffs, population and mobility. The aim of the catalogue is to ensure that data sources are used effectively and consistently across […]

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Putting users at the heart of official statistics – help us to help you to help them!

As producers of statistics, users should be central to everything we do. Whether they’re policymakers, academic researchers or simply inquiring citizens, we need to make sure that our statistics are relevant to user needs. This isn’t always easy, though. We often find ourselves caught on a treadmill of producing the same outputs to the same […]

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