NaPTAN is a shy dataset. If you’ve ever used a mobile journey planning app, you’ve probably used NaPTAN, most likely without knowing! NaPTAN, the acronym for National Public Transport Access Nodes, is a national database that contains a unique entry for each point of access to public transport: railway stations, bus stops, airports, ferry terminals, coach terminus, taxi ranks, and so on. In short, it’s an index of every place where a passenger can join or leave public transport. NaPTAN contains about 500,000 records, the vast majority of which are bus stops.
NaPTAN might not sound like the most exciting dataset, but it’s an important piece of our national data infrastructure. It has a rich pedigree - it was originally set up to enable the first journey planning services on the Transport Direct website. Since the advent of Electronic Bus Registration (EBSR), NaPTAN has been used to define the stops served by bus services, thereby reducing the need for paperwork. Local Transport Authorities often use NaPTAN, via a diverse range of software packages in a vibrant ecosystem, as the underlying master record of their bus stop management systems, using it to power their real-time bus stop displays.
For a system first created in 2002, NaPTAN has had a long life with very few issues. Except for a few changes to the data standard, it has remained in use fundamentally unchanged.
Today NaPTAN has exceeded its original use case, and we're starting to appreciate that it will need to change to still be useful in the future. As a simple example, analysis run in 2020 has revealed errors in the accuracy of its location data. An error of a few metres for a bus stop doesn’t create issues for most passengers. But any future application requiring very accurate data, such as Connected Autonomous Vehicles, won’t be ok until accuracy is at a much more granular level.
We're only at the cusp of understanding how to bring NaPTAN into the future and the future into NaPTAN, but we are committed to developing and supporting this essential piece of infrastructure.
We’re working on improving NaPTAN both as a dataset and as a service.
First, new accessibility legislation, coming into force in September 2020, has given us the drive to review the structure, design, and content of the website, which still uses a legacy design. We’re re-writing the documentation and making sure it can be kept up-to-date easily.
Secondly, in June we finished our Discovery for the future of services powering the NaPTAN dataset. Our Agile development team has been working tirelessly to run an iterative process to refresh the NaPTAN service. The team has been engaging with data producers and consumers, who have been positive about the redevelopment and given the team some very good suggestions.
Thirdly, we’re working to assess the quality of the data in NaPTAN to plan how to improve it, a first step towards a more comprehensive review. We've taken the step to open source the library we've written to assess the data quality and visualize the stops in an area to research the issues. This library performs a series of internal and geospatial consistency checks on the daily NaPTAN data release. Also, when queried for a named administrative area OpenNaPTAN will provide an interactive HTML document map with all the active NaPTAN entries within that administrative area.
We are working in an Agile way, based on sprints, but we’re aware that securing the future of NaPTAN is a marathon, during which we will keep it responding to emerging user needs. This will be a multi-year programme running in partnership with the whole NaPTAN ecosystem:
We’ll keep you up to date as this work progresses!
]]>Successful transformation starts with a willingness to question everything. Like many industries, the bus sector was being challenged by disruptors, such as Uber, but is vitally important to the economy, addressing issues around congestion, emissions, air quality and climate change as well as connecting people and places.
The Buses Team knew that rapid progress needed to be made to address some of its long-term challenges. They started looking at how technology could effect change by opening data and creating new market opportunities. This response links to more fundamental changes happening globally, contributing to meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure & Sustainable Cities and Communities.
Their hypothesis was that providing access to open data about local bus services across England and empowering passengers would create opportunities to challenge existing information strongholds and redistribute power. Open data enables innovation which ultimately benefits the travelling public. The background can be found in The Case for Change that the department published in April 2018.
Tapping into the distributed expertise from industry, internal teams, collaborators like the Open Data Institute, and suppliers like Ito World was critical to the programme’s success. This not only improved the skills of the existing team but also set the blueprint for how we believed that transport systems of the future would need to be designed and operated. The Bus Open Data Service provides a blueprint for how the department openly publishes and leverages mass transit data for citizens.
In contrast to many legislative reforms, this project embraced a holistic digital approach. The Bus Open Data Service was built using agile methods, enabling the team to harness knowledge and expertise across government, including from the Government Digital Service, as well as from the wider industry. The benefit of this approach was that we were able to take risks, fail fast and iterate regularly without having committed to significant spend or artificial project deadlines.
During the early stages, we ran a discovery to consider open data architecture options that were best suited to the industry’s needs. We’ve written before about our approach to discovery and how exploratory analysis earlier in the design phase is of benefit to the policy development process. The Bus Open Data Team have been able to benefit from this approach as the development of the policy and delivery of the Bus Open Data Service have been closely aligned.
Establishing a multi-disciplinary team bringing together the policy and digital service delivery workstreams was key to the success. We took the innovative step of including our lawyer, BrianMulrennan, in the fortnightly sprints. During 2019, Brian highlighted the benefits of developing legislation iteratively, considering feedback from user research and stakeholder engagement sessions to refine the requirements and make sure what was legally required of bus operators aligned with what was technically possible through the Bus Open Data Service.
In Brian's own words:
I have found when working on the PSV Open Data project that agile thinking and behaviours become second nature. Agile thinking and regular fortnightly meetings with policy both in-person and virtual have helped us to make changes at pace to draft the regulations to reflect the emerging needs of the system’s digital build
By working in the open and collaborating early there have been opportunities to establish partnerships that will ultimately deliver greater benefits. The team understood that the success of the project would rest upon driving innovation with data, to ensure passenger applications, products and services are developed and the benefits of the data are fully realised for public transport users across England. An example was ensuring the data is used by Google and incorporated into Google Maps. This approach has been rewarded with positive feedback and support from a variety of our collaborators, including The Open Data Institute, Transport Focus, Google, Ito World, and of course the Buses Baroness, Baroness Vere.
There have been many lessons learned along the way. The DfT Digital Service is currently building its capability to be able to respond to the need to provide more outward-facing services to digitally transform transport networks across the country. Since 2017, we’ve witnessed a dramatic transformation in the skills and capabilities available to the Bus Open Data Team to support with the delivery of the project, including technical architects, business change specialists, digital business partners and procurement specialists.
A key learning for this programme has been to allow a longer lead time to develop legislation. The programme is creating new regulations and it was really important that most user research and stakeholder engagement had been completed before the requirements could be finalised, to ensure these aligned with the Digital Service design. Making the regulations once the Bus Open Digital Service had been built enabled the team to iterate and develop the regulations in an agile manner. The regulations are due to be laid during 2020.
This work has demonstrated that when we focus on creating an environment for successful delivery then complex problems can be solved in new innovative ways that we may not have initially thought of. As teams across DfT contribute to the Grand Challenges in the Industrial Strategy, our ability to connect and collaborate with smart people across society is going to require us to work differently. Conversations continue about how we can enable societal problems to be solved using new innovative levers.
Providing technology platforms and digital literacy within the department is key to making this a reality and so we continue to invest in our business relationship management, innovation and change management capabilities. We’ll be able to update soon on how we will be providing advice and guidance in the department having completed the DfT Digitisation Advice and Guidance Discovery.
Follow the Bus Open Data team on Twitter
Join the Buses Open Data mailing list by emailing busopendata@dft.gov.uk
Innovation thrives from the diversity of thought. Yet, whilst the UK’s tech sector is one of the swiftest growing sectors in the UK, the proportion of women in the tech sector has flatlined at 16% since 2009. Even worse, women in Science, Engineering and Technology management roles dropped to 14% in 2019.
With DfT’s diverse make-up and experiences, we’re thrilled to celebrate the innovative digital and tech developments across the wider DfT ‘family’ (including the Department for Transport, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency and High Speed 2 Ltd) - and the inspirational women who are driving these projects forward.
The theme for International Women’s Day 2020 is #EachForEqual. It’s an opportunity to help create a gender-equal world by challenging stereotypes, fight bias, broaden perceptions, improve situations and celebrate women's achievements.
I joined DfT from the private sector in September 2017. My background is in IT consultancy and workplace transformation. I’ve had the opportunity to work on IT projects across Scandinavia, Europe and the US, as well as on a large-scale programme for Vodafone in the UK.
I’ve recently stepped up to lead the project delivery function within Digital Service to cover my manager’s maternity leave. I’m excited to be given the opportunity to lead the team and continue the great work that Lindsay De Bank has achieved.
I fell into a career in IT after initially landing my dream marketing job after university and realising I hated it. A friend suggested I apply to a start-up consultancy firm he joined, and I’ve never looked back. I learnt everything I know on the job, and through training and work shadowing, with a few exams and certificates along the way.
I’ve always put users at the heart of any IT project and it’s refreshing that at DfT we have dedicated teams for user research and change management. I’m passionate about delivering services that are intuitive and simple to use.
I’ve always naturally migrated towards strong female role models at work and have often ended up in female-dominated teams in a largely male environment. It’s disappointing that the male to female ratios haven’t significantly changed since I started work in the mid-1990s. I’ve always found technology to be a fair and inclusive industry sector and I’m always looking out for staff to coach and mentor. I've seen many apprentices and graduates progress and flourish – I just wish more of them were women.
I joined HS2 as an IT Service Operations Apprentice in October 2019. My role entails various aspects which are solely based around customer service. These include dealing with customer satisfaction and net promoter score (CSAT/NPS) responses, request management and continual service improvement. Since owning CSAT and NPS process, our survey response rate has more than tripled. This was achieved through using the resources available to promote statistics, listening to what end users have to say and implementing continuous improvement initiatives on the back of feedback.
To guarantee compliance with data security, I have recently kickstarted an appropriate mobile device refresh policy. This is to ensure that all my colleagues at HS2 have a corporate device which can receive the latest – as well as any future – security updates.
As a female apprentice at HS2, I feel extremely empowered being surrounded by other women from different walks of life. I am currently a new member of HS2’s internal Gender Balance Network. I intend to use this network by attending committee meetings to listen to/share thoughts and ideas on what strategies can be put into place at HS2 to promote equality and diversity. I will also be volunteering with HS2 Limited’s Skills, Employment and Education team in March at the Big Bang Fair 2020 where I’ll be given the opportunity to share my experiences with young women who are interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)-related careers.
Although I work in a male dominated industry, I receive an immense amount of support at HS2 which encourages career progression for myself and other women in the business. Over the next 5 years, I hope I'll see an increase in female representation within the industry (with more women in positions of power), closure of the gender pay gap in STEM careers and the elimination of negative biases during the process of interviews and promotions.
I have been working on DVLA vehicles systems as a software developer, since finishing university in 2005. Initially within the private sector and then becoming a DVLA employee in 2015.
Over the years I have been part of a team that supports existing legacy services whilst also developing large volumes of change. One of the latest projects I have been involved in was the creation of the new, cloud hosted, First Registration service. This is an API based solution for all UK motor manufacturers to register vehicles with the DVLA. I am now using my skills to support Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service with electronic documents, using the Serverless framework, which enables the development of serverless applications.
Working as a developer in an agile environment, where the learning curve can be intense, is both challenging and rewarding. I can be working on different technologies from one day to the next and collaborating with many different teams across the organisation.
As a mother to a daughter, I was surprised recently to read a statistic that stated 93% of parents would not support their daughter to pursue a career in a STEM subject. For me this highlighted the increasing need to promote the opportunities available and inspire the next generation of females. In support of this, DVLA have a “Bring your daughter to work” day at the end of this month and a STEM programme which runs weekly code clubs in local schools, along with the DVLA annual code challenge.
Over the next decade, I hope we'll see an end to the gender imbalance in STEM. So we no longer have to celebrate women in technology but rather celebrate the achievements of all within the digital, data and technology profession.
I’m a senior user researcher at the DVSA in Nottingham. I’ve been involved in research my whole career. Most of my work has been in high-tech industries such as pharmaceuticals and telecoms, but I also worked for 5 years in the not-for-profit sector, researching with disengaged and hard to reach users.
At DVSA I work on the Vehicle Operator Licensing (VOL) service. This service lets lorry, bus and coach operators apply for and manage their operator licence. My role is to identify our users’ needs and ensure we meet them in an effective, easy to use manner. I gather feedback from our users on new features and collect insights into how our services are contributing to our strategic goals.
Most recently, I’ve been working to make sure VOL can be used by users of all ages, backgrounds and abilities. One in five people in the UK has a disability and 10% of the adult population are ‘internet non-users’.
While assessing our service for accessibility, one of the testers told us about his family’s haulage company. His father is a ‘technophobe’ so use of our service falls to his mother and occasionally to him - someone who lost his sight as a teenager. We now know for a fact that his family could not carry on their business if our service could not be used by blind users.
DVSA are embracing leading edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, but we must consider the abilities of all users.
User research is core to the development of good digital services. This is one way that we are bringing people with diverse skills and backgrounds into our technical teams.
I started working in the Civil Service in 2003 as an executive officer in data protection compliance, and my background prior to this was international human rights law.
I’ve been in my current role for over a year – I ensure that DVSA has a programme in place to assess and report on cyber and GDPR risk. This includes elements such as protective monitoring and incident response, supporting information asset owners and audit of third-party suppliers.
I also lead the application of the data strategy for DVSA and the roll out of some of the Office 365 applications. This work supports DVSA’s strategy to use our data in a more efficient manner to:
A core part of this is governance and technology. By using artificial intelligence technology to build the foundations for data management, DVSA will be able to be more proactive in its strategy and maintain GDPR compliance. And we'll be able to start to look at further improving our customers' experience and whether there’s financial value to our data.
As I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve been keen to see people move into the world of cybersecurity from non-technical backgrounds. It’s important to me to:
For women in technology, I’d like to start to see those who have been going through the education system start their careers and feel supported enough to have a strong work-life balance. I’d like to see the continuation of apprenticeships in this industry and targeting of minorities, female or other. Ultimately, I’d like not to have to be categorised as ‘a woman in a man’s world’.
To find out more about how we work, come along to Department for Transport Digital, Data, and Technology profession public events.
The Department for Transport and its family are hiring across the UK. You can find our roles on Civil Service Jobs
The Department for Transport (DfT) specialises in analytics and data consolidation.
The DDaT Profession in DfT supports the department to:
It’s a challenge, but we know that if we work with organisations that make up Department for Transport we'll be able to solve common challenges with common solutions.
The Department for Transport provides quarterly data to the Cabinet Office alongside every other major department in government. The data lets us and the Cabinet Office know the size of our professions. DfT provides that data alongside its agencies (DVLA, DVSA, MCA, VCA). We recently learned that DfT is the fifth largest organisation in government for digital, data and technology specialists.
The data reflects the size of the organisations, the jobs done and some interesting data around pay, gender, age and ethnicity.
We realised from the data sets we'd collected that ten times as many people were based outside of our central department offices. Most of our professionals are in Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham and Swansea.
So, it was only fair if we planned events in areas that were accessible and cheaper for everyone to reach within a day. So we picked the National College of High Speed Rail (recently renamed the National College of Advanced Transport and Infrastructure).
We knew that bringing people together to tell them about the profession itself would drum up interest with a particular group of people only.
For true change to take place, we had to introduce practitioners to people they could learn from without forcing a corporate ambition on them.
So we called the event ‘Connect, Communicate, Collaborate’. We had learning masterclasses from policy teams, digital delivery teams and innovation teams. The rest of the day was deliberately non-committal to encourage people to meet new people and keep in touch.
Building on last year's joint event, this time around we had an unconference hour that allowed people interested in similar work to join forces and find solutions.
We made sure these groups could meet up again by setting up Slack channels on x-government slack for interest groups.
There are now a number of Slack groups set up by DfT DDaT practitioners around data sharing and business analysis.
This conference was designed by the practitioners for the practitioners. All the workshops and masterclasses were ran and designed by DDaT professionals. We developed this as a joint venture between: DVLA, DVSA, MCA, VCA, High Speed 2 Limited and Highways England.
We asked senior leaders from all organisations to attend the day, so that practitioners could find answers to the best ways to deliver services both privately and during a panel discussion.
Keeping the schedule light, with lots of tea and coffee breaks was the best way to get practitioners to build long-lasting relationships.
Now, we want to keep events like these going. We’ve recently agreed with tech leaders from the transport industry to run more of these events. And right now, we're running our own ‘Introductions to Agile’ for non-digital teams and running communities of practice across the DfT family for Business Analysts, User Researchers and Data Scientists.
Join the conversation on Cross-government Slack. We're in the #connectcommunicatecollaborate channel.
Find out more about how we work, come along to DfT DDaT Profession public events.
We're planning our next conference like this, want to host or join the planning team? Contact us
The Department for Transport and its family are hiring across the UK. You can find our roles on Civil Service Jobs
Discovery is an important phase of many government digitisation projects. It focuses primarily on establishing user need for the service and finding out what already exists that might meet that need. This prevents unnecessary spend, and makes sure that money is spent on features that users need, rather than on the bells and whistles.
DfT’s Digital Service is now looking to broaden discovery in the project phase, with more speculative discussion focusing on delivering better outcomes for the future and not just better versions of today. We’re calling this Discovery 2.0.
We believe there is value in this approach, but it means making a change in the organisation so we’re starting to light little fires where there is the opportunity to do so and the first of those is now alight.
One of the best ways to innovate is to work with external experts, and so using the Digital Marketplace, a contract was awarded to Deloitte to work with the DfT and explore the broad topic of active transport planning.
Dave Tansley, Deloitte Engagement Partner, explains the team’s approach:
The project set by DfT’s Cycling & Walking unit was to analyse how digital tools can be used to provide the best infrastructure for the needs of cyclists and pedestrians across the country, while optimising the government’s £1 billion active transport investment.
DfT has already developed pilot tools that are widely used by transport planners to plan active transport infrastructure, including the fully operational Propensity to Cycle Tool (PCT). However, from the outset it was made clear that the Deloitte’s work should not be constrained by existing pilot tools.
Instead, we set out to identify the issues pedestrians and cyclists were facing when getting from A to B, evaluating new technology and data sources that could enhance the planning outcomes for their benefit. As a result, we were able to conduct a thorough analysis which concentrated on the needs of the local transport authorities and the cyclists and pedestrians themselves.
Our analysis was supported by research collected from online surveys and interviews with over 20 local authorities and industry stakeholders. You can watch a recording of one of our industry workshops on YouTube.
We also conducted a thorough technical assessment, evaluating the existing pilot tools against the needs of the transport planners. Additionally, we looked at future technology options, assessing how DfT could engage with technology providers and data suppliers to improve their planning systems.
Our analysis highlighted that some key steps in the process are not yet supported by digital tools, and some improvements can be delivered through rather simple solutions, such as incorporating additional publicly-available data sources into the existing tools.
The analysis also found that while the pilot tools were successful, there is a need to provide more robust and reliable tools for planners, for example by improving the quality of the underlying data and exploring opportunities to integrate new apps and mobile data sources.
Truly focusing on the users. By not being constrained by existing processes or tools, we can concentrate on the needs of transport planners. This approach led to a few insights:
By conducting a more speculative analysis guided by our initial hypotheses, we could address the full user journey, and not just solve the problems experienced with existing tools.
As part of our exploratory analysis, it became clear that there are new opportunities in the market. Cycle-sharing schemes and dockless bikes can provide an additional source of reliable, timely data.
Commuters are looking for new ways to move across cities and, by providing the right infrastructure, we can encourage people to take different types of transport or different routes to reduce congestion. New data sources, including mobile apps, can support planners in analysing aggregated and anonymised transport routes.
The transport sector is changing rapidly, and this Discovery framework can support DfT in providing the right tools and policy support to take advantage of new digital opportunities and mitigate emerging challenges.
Digital tools can allow DfT to unlock new value-adding opportunities. For example:
Using this more speculative approach, digital tools can be used as a key business driver, rather than simply a supportive enabler.
To conclude, Deloitte was delighted to support DfT in their efforts to understand how the use of digital tools could be enhanced to improve cycling and walking infrastructure throughout the country, and we hope to continue to work together, in order to shape the future of mobility.
This piece of work pushed the boundary of what discovery has previously been understood to be, but we know we can go further, starting by looking at the context of the service before we focus on what it needs to be.
Being honest to the Discovery 2.0 approach is a hard thing to do when there is pressure to answer the “but what do we need to do now” question. But the value of the speculative approach was demonstrated in discussions with the team where the conversation wasn’t about which features to add to existing tools but what the opportunity was to deliver greater value for money from investment in active travel schemes.
Our Digital Business Partners are working across the department to stimulate, surface and shape demand for digital. Promoting this approach will be a key activity for them and we hope they continue to demonstrate the value by taking small steps.
]]>The Transport Data Initiative (TDI) was founded in 2016. Set up by local authorities, its goal is to help its members improve the way they collect, store, and use data to make transport services better while reducing the costs of delivery.
The TDI is a partnership led by Buckinghamshire County Council and funded by Innovate UK. I sit on its steering group as the representative for the Department for Transport. The TDI runs regular events across the country to discuss data in transport. I was honoured to be asked to compère the 9th meeting in Sheffield recently.
The main themes of this event were:
It was great to see the event full to capacity, with over 60 attendees representing councils across the country. Around 150 people joined online throughout the day via a live video stream and engaged with the event with questions and comments on social media. The conversations were engaging and challenging, with participants offering a lot of food for thought from a variety of perspectives.
The opening session highlighted how data and digital technologies had delivered customer benefits and operational efficiencies in other sectors. The Department for Transport is keen to see a similar step change in transport. This is reflected in the emphasis on data in the Future of mobility: urban strategy part of the government’s Industrial Strategy.
A summary was then provided of the work already being done by DfT and others – for example, the Joint Rail Data Action Plan, the Bus Open Data Programme, the Local Data Action Plan and forthcoming work such as the Transport Data Strategy and the Future of Mobility Regulatory Review.
Graham Hanson, Head of Smarter Traffic Management at DfT, outlined the progress being made with the Local Data Action Plan. Specific actions include:
Darren Capes, ITS policy lead at DfT, and John Cooper, senior ITS engineer at DfT, provided more detail on the local authority mobility platform research. This is a project being undertaken by the Connected Places Catapult, which involves developing use cases such as:
There was an ‘ask DfT’ session, where department officials responded directly to queries from the audience. The variety of topics and angles covered was intriguing:
Many of these topics will be examined as part of the Future of Mobility Regulatory Review and the Transport Data Strategy.
There are several ways to get involved.
The first is to contribute to the final session of the event, which has an online counterpart. In the session, Abbas Lokat, a senior consultant with GeoPlace, hosted a workshop on the traffic regulation order discovery project, which seeks to understand:
This project is still running. If you wish to provide input, please visit the GeoPlace web page about the TRO Discovery Project.
A second way to contribute is to attend the next Transport Data Initiative event, the 10th. It will be held on 19 June in Bristol, and will focus on procurement, skills, and new business models – please check the TDI website for registration details.
You can also:
Earlier this month, colleagues from across the Department for Transport and its agencies gathered for an inaugural International Women’s Day themed event. The aim was to:
The afternoon kicked off with a rousing introduction from DfT’s Permanent Secretary, Bernadette Kelly, herself a fantastic role model and one of the few female permanent secretaries in government. She expressed concerns that, although the Civil Service has come a long way, there is much work still to do.
Although there are increasing numbers of women employed across government, this drops significantly when you get to senior levels. Bernadette is particularly keen to address the gender pay gap within DfT and emphasised the importance of ‘never taking your foot off the throttle’ when striving for diversity in the workplace.
Attendees were privileged to hear next from three women who have carved out hugely successful careers in the digital sector: Rachel Murphy and Karen Cleale from digital consultancy Difrent and Emma Stace, Chief Digital Officer at the Department for Education.
Their talks were honest, moving, impactful and stuffed full of helpful tips based on their own experiences for women making their way in the digital world. All shared intensely personal experiences that have helped shape them and their careers. Their stories included:
Emma talked about how she has experienced unhelpful comments as a woman, including being told how to dress and being accused of being too emotional in the workplace. She asked the audience to chat to each other for a few minutes about sexism that they have experienced at work.
It was clear from the discussion that followed that sometimes these comments come from female as well as male colleagues. Sadly, women are not always supportive of other women in the workplace.
A fireside chat was next on the agenda featuring inspirational women from inside and outside DfT: Barbara Keating (digital architect, DfT), Renate Samson (senior policy advisor, Open Data Institute), Yalena Coleman (Head of Accounts, Transport Systems Catapult), Jan Ford (Head of IT project delivery, HS2), Sarah Winmill (Chief Information Officer, British Transport Police), Sunitha Chacko (Head of Technical Architecture, Government Digital Service). They shared their own fascinating career stories and experiences and the audience had the opportunity to ask questions.
Some key messages that we can all take away:
A short video was also showcased at the event featuring women in digital roles from across the DfT family talking about their background, their role and what motivates them. Some of these women and others also featured on this blog last month.
International Women’s Day might only be one day each year but it is essential that all of us keep working hard every single day to ensure that women have equal opportunities, are properly represented and fairly treated within the workplace.
Let’s all keep stamping our feet on the throttle!
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I work on the Platform Team of the MOT testing service. We build the cloud infrastructure that the application runs on and the automated release pipelines that get code from a developer’s laptop to the live service via lots of rounds of testing.
The service is there to support our users (MOT testers) in their work. My role is to make sure that the service runs smoothly and to support our developers in making the service better.
My background is in science and I came to DVSA 2 years ago as part of a graduate scheme having zero experience of agile software delivery. The DVSA put a lot of effort into training me up and I can’t believe how far I’ve come in that time.
What I love most about my job is that no 2 days are alike. On the platform team we use a multitude of different technologies on a daily basis so there is always something new to learn. I also get to flex my problem solving muscles because, when things go wrong in unexpected ways, part of my job is to work out why.
Getting more women, and generally more people from a wider range of backgrounds, into digital roles is essential because diversity helps everyone make better things. I know first-hand what it is like to grow up in a house with no internet access and therefore how important it is.
As government employees, we take seriously our responsibility to build services for everyone and not leave anyone behind.
One of my computing heroes, Grace Hopper, spoke of the danger of the phrase “We’ve always done it this way” and that is just so true. If you want to be an innovator, if you want to agitate and to build incredible things, you need to surround yourself with people who challenge your assumptions every day. And that’s why diversity is so, so important.
I joined DfT in January 2018 from the private sector. My first task was to build a new team to meet the department’s increasing demand for digital and technology projects. The team includes delivery managers, project managers, business analysts and a software development team.
My role is to set the standards, frameworks and clear expectations that allow multi-disciplinary teams to operate successfully and deliver at pace.
We offer lots of opportunities for apprentices at the start of their digital careers, so creating a safe environment to learn, and the support to do this whilst delivering, is critical. It’s a challenge I didn’t experience in the private sector. No 2 days are the same and I love that variety and uncertainty. My day could involve:
• urgent problem solving to remove blockers that are holding up a project
• supporting project teams in managing stakeholders
• negotiating contracts
• coaching and mentoring the team
• facilitating cross project/DfT workshops
• recruiting new staff
• attending project boards and investment committees
I do what I can to provide a clear pathway for teams to deliver new user-centred services successfully, quickly and with least resistance, learning from one another and beyond.
DfT regularly wins awards for diversity as an employer, but there is still a way to go. I’m currently the sole female on the DfT Digital Service Leadership Team of 7 people and 1 in 8 members of my team are currently women. I’m a firm believer that people should be recruited and promoted based on their ability, rather than their gender or any other characteristic.
That said, I’ve met a lot of great women in the digital arena throughout my career, and I’d love to see more in my teams and across the Digital Service at DfT. Whilst it’s great for applicants, when we’re looking for a balanced panel at recruitment or a range of different perspectives on projects, I suddenly find myself in great demand!
My work within customer insight and user research has definitely been the most rewarding during my 15 year career at DVLA, and was not an area I had known much about previously.
Being the bridge between our customers and the service designers, who are tasked with providing services which are simple to use, is an interesting one. It’s taught me never to make assumptions!
I provide guidance and support to my team of 7 user researchers. Our aim is to gather purposeful insight which can be used to improve current digital services and develop new ones.
It’s a role I thoroughly enjoy, engaging with a variety of stakeholders both internally and externally. The culture at DVLA is changing and I am lucky to be given full autonomy to lead my team as I wish.
I am keen to develop my skills in both leadership and user research using the opportunities provided to me at DVLA, furthering my career in the organisation. It’s a great place to work and I’m hoping that the open and inclusive culture will continue to grow, providing more opportunities to women in the future.
I joined DfT from the private sector as a digital architect in January 2018. My role in a nutshell is to provide technical leadership across the department by being a strategic thinker, technical expert and also being empathetic in my approach.
To me, this particular role is an opportunity to make a difference to people’s everyday lives. Working at DfT has provided me with many such opportunities. Every day, I know that I am working for the good of others, whether I am improving capabilities within my department or designing new citizen-facing services.
There is a lot of research which proves that women bring different perspectives to the table. I feel welcome and confident in my work at DfT. I think the range of people from different backgrounds helps us to design better services and makes DfT a great place to work.
I joined DfT as a user researcher in the Digital Adoption & Innovation team 6 months ago. Before that, I spent 15 years working in DWP's Child Maintenance Group.
My role is to interact with development teams and other project stakeholders to create a shared understanding of users and their needs. It takes an empathetic approach to understand the constraints of the team and to challenge them to become more user-centred and take on research findings.
I joined DfT for a new challenge in a new environment. In my previous role I experienced close up the impact government services can have on people's everyday lives, and the difficulties colleagues face in using the systems to deliver them.
It’s fantastic to be part of a team bringing user-centred design to the digital platform, which increasingly shapes the way society interacts with government.
This being my first role in the digital sector, it felt both daunting and exciting. Moving from a relatively female dominated department, I wondered whether I would fit into the male world of digital, data and technology. But, in my experience, there is no such dominance.
I haven't arrived as part of a mission to assert the female gender into DDaT, I've joined a melting pot where people pool their skills and theories to produce something new. Digital is the tool; you are the welcomed facilitator, the communicator, the empathiser, the innovator. The more diverse the skill set the richer the soup, so I'd urge you to come and add your ingredients.
I joined DfT in June 2018 after 15 years working at The National Archives, advising government departments on Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) matters. I also ran the cross government Information Management Assessment programme.
Information is the lifeblood of what we do. In a paper world, managing information was relatively straightforward.
The digital world brings both opportunities (the richness of the information available to us and the increasingly sophisticated tools to help us discover and use it) and challenges (how we go about managing this huge volume of digital information and ensuring it survives for as long as we need it).
But that is what excites me and motivates me to come to work each day. There is never a dull day in Digital Service!
I’m proud to be a woman working within Digital Service. Although a cross government profession in its own right, KIM is very closely aligned with the DDAT profession and there are strong overlaps between the 2 areas.
In my experience, there are more women in the KIM community - the KIM team at DfT is entirely female right now. As these 2 professions work more closely together and learn from each other this opens the possibility for more women to enter digital roles.
As a mum of 2 daughters I’m keen to be a positive role model and have worked hard to balance my role as a parent with a fulfilling career. My message to them is to never be afraid to do what you want to do and try new things. You don’t have to be the best, the important thing is to give it a go.
]]>Find out more about working at DfT at the Civil Service Careers website
Latest Earnings Networked Nationally Overnight (LENNON) is an application used by the rail industry. It provides data, such as ticket sales and franchise earnings, which helps them better understand how the rail network operates. The application is hosted externally, but DfT maintains an in-house version containing a subset of the data for our own analysis.
It’s a huge system at more than 100 terabytes. And it’s the most heavily used system by our Rail Technical and Data Management team.
Slow query times on an application like this can be a real nuisance for those relying on frequent access to the data. And this lack of speed means we can’t exploit the data in the system to its full potential.
So what could we do to speed the system up and allow us to make better use of it?
As part of a wider transformation of the digital technology in use at DfT, we undertook a discovery exercise with Google. This gave us a clear route to shut down our in-house data centres, move our services to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and transform existing products onto GCP. LENNON was one of these transformation candidates.
After the Google discovery, we set up a Cloud & Data Centre Transformation project. Google, their partner CTS and DfT’s Digital Service, alongside the Rail Technical and Data Management team, were tasked with speeding up slow query times and improving the system’s capabilities. Not an easy task, but certainly possible.
And that’s not all we were hoping to achieve. Backups and maintenance on GCP should be ‘frictionless’. By comparison, the current application requires frequent manual intervention from the colleagues using it. Moving it to GCP will free up time and resources that could be better used elsewhere. The transformation should also increase the security of the application, something never to be overlooked.
This would be our first transformation of an existing application onto GCP, hopefully proving it as a reliable, cost effective and efficient platform for data processing among other things. So how has it gone so far?
Although the project is still in progress, we have already seen some clear and valuable benefits. According to the Rail Technical and Data Management team, processing speeds have fallen dramatically. Where it used to take several hours to execute a query, it is now taking less than 20 seconds.
Not only this but the application can now run multiple queries simultaneously without affecting its performance. These improvements have been a huge help to our colleagues in Rail IT who can now consistently receive the correct data, quicker.
From the practical side of things, there is now also the ability to use DfT’s instance of LENNON for all of our queries. Previously, we had to rely on Rail Delivery Group’s version of LENNON to run some queries. Removing this dependency will save time and effort both for us and RDG.
For DfT’s Digital Service, this project has demonstrated some huge benefits of using GCP. I hope and expect that this experience will enable us to further improve our efficiency through the transformation of similar applications.
In the words of our Chief Architect, Mark Lyons:
"The transformation of LENNON within GCP is a really exciting first step towards moving and transforming our on-premise services into Google Cloud Platform within the next six months. This has been a fantastic example of collaboration between ourselves, Google, their partners CTS and our Rail colleagues, and it has given us a design pattern that can be re-used for other data processing and analysis requirements across the wider department"
Looking forward, we have already started to reuse this approach for other projects in their early stages. It’s exciting to think that data processing as powerful as this should be available for even more projects down the line. Here’s to the cloudy future!
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]]>"Is it the unit or the data that is developing?" I've been asked this, jokingly, a few times since I started as Head of the Developing Data Unit (DDU). I've always replied, also joking, "Both, of course!". Yet I realise there is some truth to my reply.
The DDU is a new central team within the Department for Transport (DfT). Our remit is broad, encompassing all things data within DfT. As such we are a developing unit. At the same time, data is a ‘developing’ concept by nature, especially in transport.
We are a cross-functional team, working in two broad areas:
Data strategy and culture: We engage across DfT to develop a data-driven culture, and to define and implement a data strategy. To do this, we work with colleagues in all parts of the organisation and the wider transport sector.
Operational support to data-related projects: We offer ‘data intervention’ across the spectrum of data issues: technical, ethical, commercial, governance.
This year marks the 100th anniversary since the then Ministry of Transport was set up. Transport has changed a lot over the last century.
More recently, multi-modal transport has become easier thanks to transport authorities releasing their data. Innovative apps like Citymapper use that data to help people to plan their journey, offering choices they might otherwise have been unaware of.
This type of innovation is driven by data. Previously, data was only used to produce analysis and statistics after the fact. Today, live data is increasingly used to transform the way people travel.
Data can also enable policy makers and operators to make better decisions. It can be used in transport simulations to more accurately predict the effect of a course of action. It can help the transport network be more responsive to disruptions, reducing the impact on travellers and businesses. It can enable the private sector to develop innovative journey planning services.
In this developing data context, the Department for Transport:
As a team that is working to give data a more central role, we want to have an impact on all the above areas. We will work to make sure that DfT is well placed in this data-driven arena. We will support both internal and external data work across the spectrum of transport providers and users.
But we don’t want to forget that data is a means to an end. People, who make travel decisions based on data, must be at the centre of our thinking. Ultimately, we want everyone to enjoy better transport services, and the public and private sector to provide them in a way that benefits everyone.
We will:
We’re supporting colleagues in several areas. For example we are facilitating the publication of bus open data, helping the Smart Traffic Team evaluate their Local Authority Data Innovation competition, reviewing options to collect roadworks data, discovering rail data.
The Developing Data Unit is not here to play buzzword bingo, but it is in our DNA to wear many hats, as both generalists and specialists. Specialists in data, but with a generalist, agile approach to the many ramifications of data workstreams: strategy, policy, openness, ethics, digital architecture, and physical infrastructure.
This is reflected in the skills and expertise of the team. We have data policy and strategy experts, technical specialists, data management leads. We work closely with our colleagues in the digital and data analytics teams and more widely with other analysts and project leads on data projects, and with partners in the transport sector.
The Web Foundation recently published an interesting article, noting that open data is still in beta, 10 years after it appeared on the agenda of governments and local authorities around the world. In my view, the underlying issue is that data processes often have not yet become embedded as business as usual for many large organisations. Data releases abound, and that is a positive thing, but important questions around data have largely gone unanswered. We need to address issues such as how to:
Obviously not all data can be open. But the lessons we learn from open data can teach us useful lessons on the road to better services, better policies, and better deals, in a way that benefits operators and the public alike.
This is what we intend to work on. We are defining our priorities for 2019. It's going to be an interesting and challenging year. Please get in touch if you want to discuss transport data with us!
We are recruiting for a Strategic Data Manager. Are you an experienced data professional? Would you like an opportunity to help shape the transport sector’s use of data assets? Do you want to work on projects that have the potential for greatest real-world impact? If so, we would like to hear from you! View the job advert.
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