Bridging the data skills gap at Cheshire West and Chester Council
Learn why local government leaders are finding, fixing, and closing data skills gaps to deliver the best possible services to residents.
Industry
Local government
Company size
1,600
70
colleagues upskilled
The goal
Cheshire West and Chester Council relies on a huge range of data to manage and underpin service delivery and has hundreds of employees working with data every single day.
In partnership with Multiverse, the council ran a skills assessment to identify if there were areas in which the use of data could be improved through training.
"Using data effectively is essential in local government for enabling us to deliver the best possible services to residents: it helps us understand where the challenges and the opportunities across our diverse range of services are. But harnessing data requires skills and the right organizational culture."
Simone Thomas
Senior Manager for Strategic Data Systems at Cheshire West and Chester Council
The solution
That skills scan found that, while many employees were analyzing data, less than 10% were engaging in predictive analysis. It offered a huge opportunity for the council to make the most of the data they had to better predict service demand, deliver an enhanced service to residents, and inform budget planning.
"We know that data skills are in short supply across the economy, that’s why training our in-house colleagues is so important as they are the people who understand our services. Being able to identify where those data skills will make the biggest impact is a great first step."
Simone Thomas
Senior Manager for Strategic Data Systems at Cheshire West and Chester Council
The results
Now, having enrolled more than 70 colleagues from a range of services onto data upskilling programs, new data skills are unlocking valuable insights about the needs of residents and communities, enabling the council to deliver focused digital and transformation programs.
Services are benefiting from a saving in staff time on data management tasks and the Council is seeing wider impact from the creation of the new, Council-wide Data Hive network, supported from the central data science and engineering hub.
70
colleagues upskilled
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