Government Statistician Group volunteers required for Analysis Function online skills tool

Are you keen to understand what skills are needed for roles across the Government Analysis Function? Do you want to identify any areas you might want to develop in readiness for your next role?

Throughout 2020, the Government Statistical Service (GSS) took part in the trial of an online skills tool with volunteers from across all areas of the analytical professions.

The tool offered the opportunity for users to self-reflect against the professional skills required for:

• various analytical career paths
• supported career planning
• development planning
• structuring career conversations

The tool also helps us to better understand the skills of our people, helping us to provide targeted and prioritised capability building solutions. For the GSS, this means a better understanding of our learning needs which we can use to inform the learning we offer to you.

Lucy Vickers, Head of Profession for Statistics at Department of Health and Social Care, said:

“I was really pleased to be asked to be the senior sponsor of the Analysis Function online skills tool and promote this to the Government Statistical Group (GSG) members.

“Having all statisticians, making use of the online skills tool will help us as a profession to gain insights on the skills that our people need to meet their role objectives, both now and in the future, and support their career development. The tool allows us to collect data that we have never explored before, which we can then use to shape our learning offer enabling more focussed support in the development of our people.

“By having a better understanding of the gaps in our skills and further expanding the learning, we hope to become a stronger profession, with increased and more focussed development opportunities, leading to better statistics and analysis for the public good.”

From February 2021 onwards, the tool will be rolled out to members across the analytical professions. Roll out will initially be focussed on members aligned to the analytical professions; however, we plan to roll out to the wider analytical community in the future.

For the GSG, we will do this by gathering volunteers via the capability leads and heads of profession.

Please contact Analysis.Function@ons.gov.uk for more information about this.