News story

Analysis in Government month

People in GAD were key contributors to the inaugural Analysis in Government month. More than 460 attended our webinars and we also published videos and a blog about our work.

Data analysis meeting

More than 460 people attended webinars organised by the Government Actuary’s Department (GAD) for the first Analysis in Government month.

The month long programme – featuring workshops, webinars and a range of other content - was held in May and organised by the government Analysis Function. Its theme was Analysis Connect. The campaign was organised to highlight and celebrate the importance of analytical work in government.

GAD webinars

We created and hosted 2 webinars which were broadcast simultaneously on Zoom and YouTube. The GAD webinar on 12 May was called ‘Government decision-making in uncertainty’. It was seen live by more than 285 people, a new attendance record for the department.

Attendance figures also indicate that 180 people attended the ‘Working in multidisciplinary teams’ seminar held on 24 May. Recordings of both of these are available on our webinar page.

Wider contributions

Overall, more than 7,500 tickets were booked for 22 events, there was 30 hours of content and 29 blogs.

People across GAD were also involved in the department’s wider contribution to the month-long programme including a:

  • video interview of the Government Actuary Martin Clarke, who spoke about analysis, life in the Government Actuary’s Department and gave an insight into his career journey, which is available to view below:

Martin Clarke Video

Colleagues also shared videos of discussions they’d had about the work of our client engagement actuaries which is available to view below:

Client Engagement Actuaries

We also published a video chat about the actuarial profession’s work on climate change:

Climate Change

Taking part

GAD actuary Sara Ronayne who was one of the organisers of our content, added: “We really enjoyed playing such a key role in this first ever Analysis in Government month.

“GAD’s contributions led to highest ever attendance at one of our webinars since we began these last year at the start of the pandemic. Our multi-faceted approach of webinars, videos, blog and articles showed how committed we were to sharing the work of GAD and contributing to the campaign.”

Michelle Bowen from the Analysis Function added: “The inaugural Analysis in Government month provided opportunities for government analysts to connect and collaborate. Analysts from across professions and departments got involved and we heard a wide range of people’s stories through blogs and video interviews with senior analysts including the Government Actuary Martin Clarke.

“We learned about some of the big topics of the day through some fantastic events, with popular presentations including data visualisation, innovative analysis and communicating the results of analysis in an accessible way.

“Analysts from across government also worked collaboratively to try and answer some big questions at the highest level. It was fantastic to have so many from colleagues from GAD involved and sessions on government decision making in times of uncertainty and other events GAD were involved in were extremely well-received”.

Published 14 June 2021