Back in October Tom Forth tweeted about the rich amount of open data published by SNCF, compared to railways in Britain, and seemingly quickly produced the chart below, comparing tariffs vs distance in France: To extend my Python skills I
Performance analyst / Product Analyst?
I enjoyed reading Kate Gallo’s overview of the role of Product Analysts. It caused me to reflect on work I did regarding very similar roles when I was the Head of Performance and Data Analysis at the UK Government Digital
Digital multi-hyphenates
Matt Jukes’ recent post on Multi-hyphenates got a lot of comments on Twitter and certainly struck a note with me. Like Matt, I started my ‘digital’ journey in an earlier era. I started running a University website with Microsoft FrontPage,
Slow Ways hack day
On 1 February, a sunny Saturday, I travelled to Clerkenwell to join 60 or 70 other volunteers on a hack day. We were there to start identifying and mapping walking routes between Britain’s towns and cities. There are over 200,000
Some thoughts on data and smart analytics
I was asked to do some briefing notes about data and smart analytics for a strategy paper. I thought I’d share them here. High-quality government data is important for: measuring government effectiveness holding government to account helping private, public and
GP patient numbers in Winchester and open data
My GP’s surgery, St Paul’s in Winchester, has an adjacent pharmacy and small private car park. It’s always been very busy, but recently I’ve found myself queuing to get a place. It got me thinking – has my surgery actually
Being more precise about date formats
I’ve been working with Data Studio today and realised it interprets dates a bit more strictly than charts in Sheets. I thought I’d share what I did – and its reminder to pay more attention to managing date formats. Firstly,
Industry standards for measuring websites
So what’s best practice for measuring websites and their impact – especially public sector sites? I’ve recently been doing some research about useful published standards for measuring the effectiveness of websites, particularly those in the public sector that don’t have
An analytical response to ‘Facing things as they are’
Will Myddleton recently posted about Facing things as they are — as a fundamental of user research and an approach to life. As an analyst and as a meditator who works (sometimes successfully) to appreciate the moment, I really valued what Will
A multidisciplinary team
I’ve just read a recent article in the Economic View section of the New York Times. The article asks What if Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists? I liked the quotation from Michèle Lamont, a Harvard sociologist and president of the American