The London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) and the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) Data Science Campus have launched a new data science bootcamp.
The new programme aims to increase data science skills across London’s local government and improve their ability to help London boroughs and the Greater London Authority (GLA) to use data to obtain deep understanding of the city, underpin policy and design to provide more effective services.
As a first step, 15 officers working for London boroughs and GLA have been selected for the pilot cohort.
The officers will undergo a 12-week programme blending structured training with project-based mentoring and will also develop coding and analysis skills for data matching projects.
London Councils – the organisation within which LOTI works – said this will improve the officers’ ability to help London boroughs and the GLA use data to underpin policy and design more effective services.
London chief digital officer Theo Blackwell said: “Joining up and analysing data is vital to the city’s response to the pandemic but when the crisis struck we simply didn’t have enough native data scientists working across local government.
“As public services look at prevention – ill-health, homelessness, poverty, violent crime – these all require a more sophisticated approach to sharing data and having the right teams in place to make a difference with it.
“So it’s really important that all public services develop their in-house data capability and I’m delighted the City Hall is supporting this work with ONS to upskill a new cohort of data scientists to support local public services.”
The programme is designed based on the ‘applied training’ approach delivered by the ONS Data Science Campus together with LOTI, London boroughs and the GLA to meet local needs of data scientists and analysts.
