ONS Digital

One of the goals for the new Digital publishing team here at the ONS is to build our in-house capability for digital work. We have a separate division here that handles the development and web operations side of things so for now it is mainly about building a team that is an ‘intelligent customer’ for those elements and is focused on publishing, editorial and front-end improvements.

With this in mind we have a number of roles being advertised from today.

Head of User Insight and Innovation

In my opinion this has the potential to be a great job. It will oversee the web analytics, social media and stakeholder communications teams as well as having a remit to identify and prototype more innovative products. There will also be some cross-over with the open data activities that the organisation is starting to become more engaged in so some interest or understanding of that would also be of benefit. In fact in many ways this is a ‘data’ job. Really I am looking for someone who can take the analysis of our existing ‘intelligence’ to the next level and really provide the insights that will help drive the entire programme of work.

Product Manager (x2)

I’m looking for two of these roles – one will focus on the Economics side of the organisation, the other the Social. Pre-existing knowledge of statistics and these fields isn’t mandatory but any interest is going to be helpful. These people are going to be the face of my team out in the business. They will work with business areas to identify the best products or channels, help prototype ideas, lead the communications with the design and development teams and basically be the glue that holds the whole thing together. They’ll contribute to this blog and our Twitter channel and really help set the direction of our public facing work.

Front-end Developer

This is going to be a key role for us as things start to get moving. Really we want someone who is a bit of a ‘jack of all trades’; HTML, CSS, Javascript as well as all the Adobe CS stuff. Familiarity with any frameworks like D3.js or Highcharts would be a major plus. We have a talented design team and a lot of ideas but we need to work more quickly in getting them to a prototype stage as well as meet the growing demand for interactive tools to display and manipulate our data. It is going to be varied and sometimes challenging work but it is work that will have a considerable audience.

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There are considerable benefits to working with the Civil Service but there are real challenges as well. There is a real opportunity to make a difference in these roles but to be clear we are not the Government Digital Service. This is a much more traditional organisation with many of the bureaucratic and security challenges that GDS have been able to bypass.

If anyone is interested about any of these roles then feel free to contact me – matt.jukes@ons.gsi.gov.uk