Evidence and Insights (Expert / leading)

70% on-the-job learning

• Engage with decision makers to illustrate how the research, information and data generated by you and your colleagues can assist in achieving policy goals.
• Consider how regular data flows can provide alerts about emerging patterns and potential issues.
• Understand predictive analytic models and methods for improving insights, and their limitations.
• Use multiple sources of data to get a better picture of situations and issues.
• Have a rich understanding of the characteristics of the people affected by your subject area and advise others on useful ways to demonstrate potential impacts of different decisions.
• Regularly scan relevant research and evaluation findings and interpret them for policy insights.
• Build into your projects opportunities to revisit policy assumptions based on the evidence base.
• Identify with specialists which policy interventions need evaluation, and institute an appropriate methodology.
• Identify data and other evidence gaps for your agency, and lead work on future data needs and building the policy evidence base.
• Share and present your evaluation findings from specific projects and discuss lessons learned.
• Mentor and coach others in how to develop strong evidence-informed policy.

20% learning from others

• Co-design data requirements with specialists and incorporate them in policy projects for analysis.
• Engage with academics to foster research interest in long running policy issues to generate research insights.
• Engage with non-specialists and other agencies to illustrate how the research, information and data you hold will help them achieve their goals.
• Develop a collaborative relationship between policy makers, analysts and data specialists.
• Incorporate data specialists in project teams (either as direct or virtual team members).
• Cultivate a working relationship with any chief science advisors in your organisation to support your policy development and practice.

10% formal learning

• Take an online course on how to work with data strategically (e.g. Strategic Data Skills from the Open Data Institute).
• Consider more advanced courses on statistical analysis and econometrics.