People in Data (Community)

The UK is a global leader in science and research innovation, and data is at the heart of it. The importance of unlocking the power of data in the UK has been recognised in many government and public sector strategies. All AI and data science challenges are constrained by the data that informs them. If data is incomplete, unreliable, or faulty, then resulting analyses will be too, reducing the value of any insights gleaned. An overall lack of data skills across many sectors amplifies these challenges. The challenges of provisioning research ready data and enabling the sustainable reuse of data are currently tackled by a broad spectrum of professionals including students, early career data scientists and software developers, amongst others. However, there is a growing demand to better define the role of these data experts into formalised technical roles such as Data Wrangler and Data Steward, which encompasses the required training, skills development, and career pathways.

We will use our experience in data wrangling and community development in the Turing to establish and promote a community of data professionals across the UK. Through the development of various online platforms for the community, we will encourage members to share knowledge and experience. We propose to host several in person events to foster membership as well as facilitating regular online events and spaces for engagement across the community. We will also run a Data Champions scheme to further engage data professionals from different organisations and domains. We will leverage this community to develop a data literacy and readiness training plan, focused on the skills required to ensure data is research ready. This portfolio of courses will be developed in collaboration with the Skills team at the Turing and build on the successful training already available from the Research Engineering Group and Tools, Practices and Systems Programme including The Turing Way project. The material for all courses will be developed to be used for in person and online training courses and made available openly (open licensed). In addition, the team will encourage further trainers to access the courses to ensure the material can be reused across the community. The instigation of a new professional society for data professionals in data science would provide opportunities for professional development, support building the networks and communities, and represent their community during policy discussions. We will therefore develop a business case to specify the establishment of a society and learn from the experience of the RSE community. This business case will be published for use by other groups who may be working in distinct but related areas.