Shooting for the Moon
As year one of the Essex Centre for Data Analytics (ecda) draws to a close, I find myself pausing to reflect on the past 12 months. Earlier in July, ecda published a video that highlighted some of our successes from …
How we work
Three heads are better than one (unless you are shopping for hats)
Because of my role-slash-job-title everyone wants to talk to me about their data work. ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the time… And it’s not just people in my team (the excellent Analytics & Data Science team), it is other teams at Essex County Council, …
Be Part of the Equation
Sowing the seeds: how we have grown, nurtured talent and built capacity for future success When we launched ecda one year ago, I never dreamt it would result in establishing so many new relationships, our partners now feel like an …
Clustering for understanding
Drowning in data and need to find a means of reducing it in a meaningful way?! It's a familiar feeling! We have thousands of data sets that tell us something about all the communities in Essex - but we can’t …
Get your rhythm back with RAP
“Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment,” so says philanthropist Tony Robbins! In analytics there are certain tasks that are regularly repeated – processing raw data, running specific analyses, updating …
Geo-Spatial Analysis: Not Just A Pretty Picture
One good thing to have come out of lockdown has been the little bit of extra time to learn and test new things. I’ve spent a lot of my recent free time making the most of my DataCamp license, learning …
Research while working from home can be done!
Is it okay if I work from home today, I have a sofa being delivered? Can I work from home for 3 months because of a global pandemic?...
The research team within ECC have had to adapt like all other ECC functions and utilise the technology that would never have been thought about previously, and the ways of a researcher have had to adapt faster to this at an unnerving pace.
Talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships
I’m partial to a board game, my prowess at Cluedo is well known among my nearest and dearest. I think analytics is a bit like a detective game - stitching together the clues, refining the key lines of questioning, ruling …
Shining a light on the potential of open data
Sharing insight and intelligence that helps our county to plan, prioritise and shape our understanding of community needs has always been important to us. As part of our collaborative data efforts we have launched a new Open Data COVID-19 risk …
Telling Ella's story with impact
Back in, what feels like, the distant past when we could all go out to the pub and the news wasn’t exclusively about Coronavirus I entered an NHS data visualisation competition. Now obviously the NHS has a fair bit going …