Coming soon: the Data Science Community Showcase is a celebration of the power of community. This year, the event will take place over three days, from 28 to 30 November 2023.
Read more on Data Science Community Showcase 2023
We demonstrate the use of a range of freely available anonymised and aggregated novel datasets to estimate visitation counts to natural areas.
Read more on A data science approach to estimate the use of natural spaces: a feasibility study
We have been exploring how NLP techniques and LLMs could be used in the future to improve website search experience for end-users.
Read more on Using large language models (LLMs) to improve website search experience with StatsChat
We are planning to follow up on previous work we published earlier this year looking at public transport availability across the UK, by providing metrics for urban centres across the UK, as well as their international counterparts.
Read more on Comparing international transport performance in urban centres: upcoming work
We have produced an alternative estimation of the census travel to work matrices annually from 2012 to 2021, bridging the 10-year gap. This report looks at the technical specification of the gravity model, with the summary of input data and initial results.
Read more on Technical report: Estimation of travel to work matrices
Using novel modelling approaches, we have produced an alternative estimation of the travel to work matrices annually between 2012 and 2021, bridging the 10-year gap between Census data.
Read more on Estimation of travel to work matrices
Nowcasting refers to generating estimates of the current (“now”) state of the economy. We investigate how signature methods can be useful in the context of economic nowcasting
Read more on Helping decision makers understand the economy quickly through new methods
In this guest blog post, graduate data scientist, Lilly Taylor, gives an an account of what it is like to work as a graduate data scientist in the public sector.
Read more on Guest blog: A day in the life of a graduate data scientist in the public sector
In this blog post, we are sharing more about what is available through the community to support you in your career, including the our brand-new Living Library.
Read more on How the cross-public sector data science community can support your career
We are pleased to announce that we have expanded our training offer by incorporating the delivery of the Analysis Function technical training, which includes delivering instructor-led workshops.
Read more on More ways to expand your data science skills with the Data Science Campus
We celebrate work we have done to build data and data science skills across the wider public sector, and share our plans for the future.
Read more on Building a love for data across the public sector
We show how shipping instructions can be used to map the trade routes of critical goods. This will help understand our reliance on global ports for accessing specific products, and draw insights on the impact of important events such as strikes.
Read more on Using new shipping data to improve government understanding of trade flows
We have published data to help researchers and local planners understand how public transport access varies across the UK, using open data and open-source software.
Read more on Using open data to understand hyperlocal differences in UK public transport availability
In this guest blog, data science apprentice Evie Brown from the Social Care Analysis team at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) presents work on grouping online job adverts by social care role. This project was a significant part of the final year of the Level Six Data Science Apprenticeship.
Read more on Identifying different roles in the social care sector using online job advertisements
Find out more about the Government Data Science Community’s events and opportunities in 2022. The community is a vibrant space for analysts and data scientists in the UK public sector.
Read more on The Government Data Science Community in 2022
This summer, the Campus faculty hosted two groups of students to engage them in a unique work experience that helped them gain valuable workplace skills.
Read more on Opening our doors to future talent
We welcomed guests from 26 national and international organisations at our offices in Newport, including partners from Rwanda, Brazil, Thailand, Lebanon, Jordan and Canada.
Read more on Bringing the world to ONS: Working together on data science and big data
Rail services can be affected by temporary factors such as unseasonably hot weather, industrial action and engineering works. We produced maps from open data showing service levels at every station in Great Britain over a 21-day period.
Read more on Visualising rail schedules using open data
At the World Expo in Dubai, we supported other National Statistics Organisations to develop their data science capability by delivering a series of workshops, training sessions and discussions.
Read more on UK data science on a global stage
Data synthesis is an active area of research for many organisations, including the Office for National Statistics (ONS). SynthGauge is a Python library that provides decision-makers with a range of metrics and visualisations for evaluating synthetic data.
Read more on Evaluating synthetic data using SynthGauge
To support the national fight against coronavirus (COVID-19) in March 2020, BT made aggregate, anonymised mobility data available to the UK Government. We quickly turned this into daily updates, with only one day’s delay between activity and the reporting of it.
Read more on Case study: responding to the coronavirus pandemic using aggregated BT mobility data
Understanding and monitoring the major influences on COVID-19 infection numbers in communities is essential to inform policy making and evaluate the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions. We have developed a community-level analysis by assembling a large set of static and dynamic data for England.
Read more on Use of hybrid data to understand the community-level influences on coronavirus (COVID-19) incidence
The UK’s exit from the European Union created uncertainty about workers across a range of sectors, exacerbated by concerns over workers leaving the country and the impact on labour supply. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic created additional and sudden changes, with sectors being affected heterogeneously and demand switching from services to goods.
Read more on Worker shortages: A window on labour demand during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic
On 27 March 2017, with an audience of UK and international data science leaders from across the public, private and academic sectors, a team of 8, some brilliant presentations, and a lot of excitement, the Data Science Campus was launched. 5 years later, Louisa Nolan shares what have we learned along the way.
Read more on The Data Science Campus – five years of data science for public good
We are delighted to launch the Public Sector Data Science Graduate Programme for 2022 to 2024, with applications open until 24 March 2022.
Read more on Launching the Public Sector Data Science Graduate Programme 2022 to 2024
It has been one year since the creation of the Data Masterclass for Senior Leaders, and participation in the programme has far exceeded expectations.
Read more on One year of the Data Masterclass for Senior Leaders
Our data science apprentices have gone from strength to strength over the past three years, and are using their passion and experiences to inspire young people and be role models for the next generation of data scientists.
Read more on Building data science futures one bite at a time
During National Apprenticeship Week 2021, we wanted to help ONS staff with young kids being home schooled by giving them some time back while we taught their children some data science.
Read more on Bitesize data science for kids
Applications for the Data Visualisation Accelerator are open until 11 February 2022. We hear how a mentor and mentee from the first cohort of the programme and how they, and their organisations benefitted.
Read more on Visualising in pairs – growing data visualisation skills through mentoring
The relationship between the mentor and mentee is vital to successful outcomes on the Data Science Accelerator programme. Daniel O’Callaghan (Forestry Commission) and Sam Taylor (DWP) talk about their relationship that helped to deliver a successful project.
Read more on How effective mentoring relationships are growing data science skills and capacity In 2021, the ONS-UNECE machine learning group demonstrated the benefits of international cooperation for advancing machine learning in official statistics.
Read more on How international collaboration is advancing machine learning in official statistics
The Data Science and Data Visualisation Accelerator mentoring programmes will open for applications in January 2022.
Read more on Boost your data science and visualisation skills in 2022!
Our FCDO hub’s mentorship model has helped countries, including Rwanda and Vanuatu, deliver in-house data science projects with significant impact, while also creating a flourishing sustainable ecosystem of data scientists.
Read more on Making an international impact with data science mentoring
In 2021, our highly successful Data Science Graduate Programme has been expanded across the UK pubic sector. We have offered 50 places on the programme, located in 10 public sector organisations. 25 places were offered to new graduates, selected from 511 applications. An additional 25 places have also been offered to 25 analysts already in posts, who want to significantly increase their data science skills.
Read more on Graduate Induction Week
This summer, data science apprentices in our faculty worked with young people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, introducing them to data science and supporting them to start developing skills in the field.
Read more on Supporting improved social mobility through data science
In this guest blog, Robyn Hunt from the ONS travel and tourism review team looks at using mobility data to model estimates from the International Passenger Survey.
Read more on Using Mobile Phone Data for Enhancing International Passenger Survey Traveller Statistics
We worked with Statistics Canada to help build data science skills in the Caribbean community, delivering virtual Reproducible Analytical Pipelines training to 12 nations over 5 time zones.
Read more on Taking Reproducible Analytical Pipelines on a virtual tour: first stop the Caribbean
Many countries in the developing world lack regular estimates of road traffic activity. To address this, we applied machine learning techniques to open-source satellite data to generate estimates of traffic volume in Kenya, East Africa.
Read more on Detecting Trucks in East Africa
We have been exploring if machine learning methods and publicly available spatial datasets can be used to map and understand HIV risk in Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa.
Read more on Mapping HIV risk in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa
Applications are open for the 2021 Data Science Graduate Programme until 3 June 2021. This year’s programme has been expanded to offer places at several high-profile public-sector organisations.
Read more on Expanding the Data Science Graduate Programme
How the Data Science Campus and UNECE are continuing to lead international collaboration on Machine Learning for Official Statistics through the ML 2021 group.
Read more on Leading international collaboration in machine learning for official statistics
The Campus has exceeded a target to train 500 public sector analysts in data science by 2021. The target was originally set in 2018, and recently confirmed in the National Data Strategy.
Read more on 500 not out – building data science capacity for the future
We have been exploring Facebook data to understand changing patterns of mobility and the impact of lockdown restrictions.
Read more on Using Facebook data to understand changing mobility patterns
The Campus is partnering with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) to to develop research, build skills and share resources on Machine Learning developments and applications for official statistics across the global statistical community.
Read more on ONS-UNECE Machine Learning 2021 Group
This blog outlines some of the work the Campus has been doing, bringing our skills together with new data sources to help inform responses to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Read more on Understanding mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic
In this blog, we describe how we have assessed the quality of the novel Global Surface Water Explorer (GSWE) dataset to better understand its value and fitness-for-purpose, producing data to report the UK’s position on indicator 6.6.1.
Read more on Using satellite imagery to report changes to water bodies for SDG 6.6.1
We used text data from over 500,000 business websites to inform survey response-chasing efforts and gain insights into the impact of COVID-19.
Read more on Extracting text data from business website COVID-19 notices
On World Statistics Day 2020, our ONS FCDO Data Science Hub talk about exploring the use of satellite imagery to conduct a cattle census in South Sudan.
Read more on Counting cows in South Sudan
This week is National Coding Week – an annual event that aims to inspire young people to code and build digital skills.
Read more on Getting the UK coding
We conducted a lessons learned exercise to help understand the challenges faced by our teams during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Read more on The hard reality of being a learning organisation
The latest update on our work with Barclays exploring if aggregated and anonymised card transactions data could provide significantly quicker, more granular insight into UK consumer spending.
Read more on Payments Data for Public Good
The Campus will develop and deliver the 2021 programme in partnership with several Office for National Statistics (ONS) teams and other government departments.
Read more on 2021 Commonwealth Professional Fellowship programme
We introduce pyGrams – a new Python tool for extracting, visualising and identifying emerging terms in large document collections, such as patents.
Read more on Extracting, visualising and identifying emerging important terminology from patent collections
The University of Glasgow will offer the MDataGov online in the 2020 to 2021 academic year and will also offer individual modules from the programme this summer.
Read more on Bringing MDataGov online with the University of Glasgow
On International Day of Girls in ICT 2020, Harriet Sands talks about her journey into data science, what it’s like to work as a data scientist in government and how she would encourage a younger version of herself to get in to data science.
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