Office for National Statistics
Data Governance Manager
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Locations
The locations for this role are Newport and Titchfield (Fareham).
This role is aligned to ONS hybrid working principles, which are based on attending the office with purpose. The post holder will be expected to contribute to the organisation’s overall 40% office attendance, in line with business and role requirements.
Due to workforce controls you can only select Manchester / London / Darlington / Edinburgh if you are an existing ONS / UKSA employee contracted to that location. If you are not contracted at one of these sites, these options are not available to you.
Only existing ONS contractual homeworkers can select Homeworking.
Applicants who select a location they are not eligible for will be removed from the recruitment process and will not be considered for alternative locations. Please refer to attachments for further terms and flexibilities.
The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.
Job Summary
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime and migration.
The Data Governance function within the Office for National Statistics is critical to enabling the good and appropriate use and management of data across the organisation, ensuring that the data that the ONS relies on to produce official statistics, research, and other core purposes is reliable and trusted so that outputs are equally reliable and trusted. Data Governance professionals ensure that data is acquired correctly and well managed across the ONS so that it is findable, understandable, useable, and treated as a valuable asset.
These roles span a range of business areas across the Office for National Statistics, reflecting the critical importance of data governance in how data is collected, managed and used. You’ll be at the heart of the data life cycle, helping to ensure our data delivers value safely and effectively.
Job Description
The function can cover multiple areas within the Office for National Statistics which reflects the critical role Data Governance plays and the lifecycle of data moving through the office.
You may work as part of the Data Acquisition team to support ONS, Government and Academic analysts answer the questions of the day by working with data partners to negotiate and enable access to sustainable data sources, putting in place, maintaining and managing data governance frameworks for safe data sharing and usage, and implementing and supporting the data strategy. This involves understanding and consolidating analysts’ requirements for producing and developing their statistics, matching these with the available data, negotiating access to these data for statistical and research purposes, and making tactical recommendations on the creation of data assets. Successful delivery will result in robust processes and documentation, working closely across Data Acquisition, the directorate and the rest of the organisation.
You may work as part of the Data Governance Office Team to support the Chief Data Officer (CDO) and Deputy CDO to ensure good governance of all data within the ONS.
This team engages across ONS with subject matter experts in a range of data management areas, tapping into their expertise to develop strategy and identify, collate and catalogue, policies, standards, guidance, and metadata. This team works with staff holding data governance roles & responsibilities to ensure that the strategy, policies, and standards are known, adopted, embedded and adhered to and supports the tracking and reporting of key performance indicators to demonstrate the effectiveness of this work.
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All Data Governance roles within ONS apply relevant data and ethical frameworks and standards to their work and understand data governance good practice. Specifically, providing advice to users on the technical, ethical, data protection and security, and legal aspects (e.g. GDPR) of using data, and the benefits of using it.
You will be able to grasp statistical, economic, and social concepts quickly, identifying common needs for data and communicating appropriately and clearly between technical and non-technical audiences.
You will understand data and how they can be prepared for, and used in, statistics and research and how they can benefit policy and decision making, as well as understanding the economy and society better. You will need to build and demonstrate a good understanding of data and how it is used in the production of official statistics and research.
Responsibilities
- Lead the process of capturing stakeholder needs, assessing, defining and justifying those needs to arrive at a definitive set of user requirements that are reflected in the required documentation.
- Leading on stakeholder engagements using strong negotiation and tailored communication to build trust and reach consensus.
- Lead the process of preparing documentation for data sharing and/or governance, for example memorandums of understanding, business cases, and policy documents and play an instrumental role in standardising this documentation.
- Build and maintain strong relationships with stakeholders to ensure data governance policies, standards and guidance are understood, adopted and embedded across the organisation.
- Develop a good understanding of data sharing legislation, data governance and data management and be able to apply this to your day-to-day work.
- Develop, maintain and own project plans, incorporating requirements, deliverables and risks that are associated with the project.
- Provide expert advice on data governance, including data protection, security, ethical and legal considerations (e.g. GDPR), ensuring the appropriate and responsible use of data.
- Promote good data management practices, including data quality, metadata and standards, helping to ensure data is findable, understandable and reusable.
- Communicate complex data governance concepts clearly and effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences, tailoring messages to meet their needs.
- Contribute to the effective use of data across the organisation by supporting its governance, accessibility and appropriate use for statistical, research and operational purposes.
- Monitor and support compliance with data governance policies and standards, using evidence to inform improvements and strengthen governance practices.
- Line manage and support colleagues where applicable, fostering a culture of continuous development and high performance.
Person Specification
Essential Criteria:
- Stakeholder relationship management (Working) - Identify important stakeholders and communicate with them clearly and regularly. Tailor communication to stakeholders' needs and work with them to build relationships while meeting user needs. Build and reach consensus with stakeholders. Work to improve stakeholder relationships using evidence to explain decisions.
- Communicating between the technical and the non-technical (Working) - Communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders. Support and host discussions within a multidisciplinary team, with potentially difficult dynamics. Be an advocate for the team externally. Manage differing stakeholder perspectives.
- Data Management (Working) - Follow organisational data governance, including policies on data access, sharing, dissemination and protection. Participate in or deliver data management across services or products. Use appropriate data management tools, procedures and methods with some support.
- Data Governance (Working) - Demonstrate up-to-date knowledge of data governance theory, standard methodology and the practical considerations. Develop an end-to-end data governance framework (the processes, operational policies and standards needed to support data management). Work effectively with technical teams and other stakeholders to implement a data governance framework, and make recommendations to ensure compliance.
- Strategic Thinking (Working) - Work within a strategic context and communicate how activities meet strategic goals. Contribute to the development of strategy and policies.
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Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Communicating and Influencing
- Delivering at Pace
- Working Together
- Seeing the Big Picture
Salary and Benefits
Alongside your salary of £41,985, Office for National Statistics contributes £12,163 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.
Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that our careers site will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.
Inclusion & Accessibility
At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.
As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.
If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Selection Process Details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.
Security Clearance
For ONS the requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying and the department will consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.
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