{"id":899,"date":"2020-01-08T08:59:06","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T08:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/statistics\/?p=899"},"modified":"2020-12-14T08:20:37","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T08:20:37","slug":"working-as-a-government-statistician-david-redpath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/statistics\/2020\/01\/08\/working-as-a-government-statistician-david-redpath\/","title":{"rendered":"Working as a government statistician – David Redpath"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the Scottish Government welcoming applications<\/a> for Assistant Statistician posts, we have a series of blog posts by government statisticians talking about how they became Assistant Statisticians. We also have some fixed term opportunities available now. If you are interested in a fixed term opportunity, please submit your up to date CV to: statistics.enquiries@gov.scot<\/a><\/p>\n

In this blog David Redpath<\/strong> tells us about his experiences.<\/p>\n

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My route into the statistics group hasn\u2019t been the conventional one. I gave up maths after my Standard Grades, opting for physics as my numerate Higher instead. I then studied Sociology at Edinburgh University, where the compulsory statistics class in Honours was seen as a necessary evil to get the degree; SPSS was not my friend in those days and that was just using the menus\u2026 qualitative data analysis seemed far more fun.<\/p>\n

Once I completed my Sociology degree, I then signed up for a Masters in Human Resource Management at Strathclyde University. Statistics were encountered again as part of professional skills module, with the main units covering things such as people management, employment law, employee relations and so on. Once I finished the degree I worked in HR in various places gaining experience, and then I got my first \u2018proper job\u2019 as an HR Advisor in NHS Lothian.<\/p>\n

After doing the job for a while it was quite apparent that role and even the career path wasn\u2019t for me, but the bit I did like was looking at the reports being generated on things like absence management and making sense of them, looking at the outliers driving up the average rates and then trying to communicate this data to the managers I was supporting, linking the underlying data to the individuals.<\/p>\n

My dad, who worked at NHS NSS Information Services Division, said I\u2019d probably like working there as an Analyst\/Statistician and the next time \u2018Information Analyst\u2019 jobs became available I applied and (after brushing upon my basic statistics) was successful in getting a post.<\/p>\n

My time in ISD started in the Secondary Care Team analysing acute hospital data, using individual patient records doing adhoc requests, working on publications such as A+E waiting times, wider projects like creating benchmarking dashboards and predicting emergency admissions to assist winter planning.\u00a0After doing this for a few years I was lucky enough to get promoted and found myself seconded into the Scottish Government, where I worked in Health Analytical Services Division (ASD) in a team covering NHS workforce statistics and NHS Pay modelling.<\/p>\n

This was fascinating, a really fast paced team helping to provide statistics to help inform and shape policy, answer Parliamentary Questions, and brief Ministers. One thing I found great about being in the Scottish Government was the statistics group, the Assistant Statistician meetings and the general camaraderie and professional support\u00a0available.<\/p>\n

After almost two years in this post I rotated back to posts in ISD, one in eDRIS supporting data linkage, learning about information governance and creating extracts for researchers. Then after about a year there I moved back to the Secondary Care Team\u00a0where I was heavily involved in the production of publications, and the overhaul and improvement of these.<\/p>\n

I was looking for something new and the opportunity of a two year secondment into National Records of Scotland presented itself.\u00a0 The post was in the Admin Data team. Data linkage is a topic I\u2019d been interested in for a while. The project looked a real challenge and opportunity to be involved in something that hadn\u2019t been done before. I was delighted to be offered the post and have been here since November 2018.<\/p>\n

There are two main strands to my work, both have never been done before in Scotland:<\/p>\n