Data transformation framework: data personas report

3 Workshop preparation and approach

Participant selection

The background research and draft high-level personas were used as a guide to select workshop participants. Relevant participants were drawn from various Government departments and Local Authorities. 18 individuals were invited to take part with the ambition of 16 individuals being successfully recruited to take part in one of two workshops. The participant selection was designed to cover as broad a range of the high-level personas identified in the background research as possible. It is acknowledged it was not possible within such a small group to cover them all. To aid discussions the participants mostly had some experience of working with data.

The breakdown of participants is as below:

Survey development

To maximise the effectiveness of the workshops for nuanced discussion, factual information was captured in advance from the participants through the use of a survey. The questions were designed to understand the participant's current engagement with data and validate their possible persona.

The following questions and possible answer sets were utilised in the survey:

• Can you provide us with a brief description of your role? [Free text]
• Please rate your experience of working with data, with 1 being the lowest [Scale 1-5]
• Have you completed any formal training around using data? [Yes/No]
  • If you answered Yes, please provide a brief overview [Free text]

• How often are you involved with activities in the area of: [never, daily, weekly, monthly, annually, ad-hoc]
  • Data creation eg surveys, questionnaires, research
  • Report creation using graphs, tables or other data views
  • Data governance
  • Data quality and/or cleansing
  • Data consumption eg reading other peoples reports
  • Data analysis
  • Data integrations
  • System setup/configuration
  • Data extracts
  • Data strategy
  • Collation of data

• Please specify any other data, or information, related activities you are involved with, not already mentioned above, and the frequency you do them [Free text]
• From the following list of data types, select all you make use of in your current role [geospatial, demographic, open data, public data, private data]
• What types of areas is the data you work with? Select all that apply. [Local government, Your organisation, The internet, National agencies, Academia, National government, Subscription providers, Private companies]
• Which of the following tools have you used in your current role? Select all that apply [Spreadsheets, Visual Basic, DAX, Tableau, SQL, Power BI, Python, R, Statistical packages, Other]
• From the following list, which areas do you feel additional training would most benefit you? [Point and click analysis tools, Visualisation tool, Statistical packages, Data governance, Data analysis techniques, Programming languages, Data quality and cleansing techniques, Data ethics, Working with spreadsheets, Report automation processes, Other]
• In the scope of your current role, how do you discover the data sources you need? [Web based research, Colleagues, Experience, External sources, Other]
• In the scope of your current role, what methods do you use to access data? [Request to another person or department, via an API, File extracts or downloads, Other]
• If there is anything else around your use of data/information in your current role you would like to share with us, please add it here [Free text]

Workshop discussion guide

The Scottish Government project group, Effini and User Vision collaborated to develop a discussion guide for the two workshop sessions to ensure good coverage of all of the main areas of interest for the project.

The discussion guide was designed to build on the factual information captured through the survey with more detail and personal experiences. Alongside an introduction to the Data Transformation Project itself, the workshop attempted to widen the scope beyond the participants own role to that of their team and stakeholders. It also delved into the barriers and challenges around their use of data and their views on improvements that could be made.

The following workshop discussion guide was agreed:

Background/Introduction

• Familiarisation with DTF project – introductory talk by Shona Nicol and Sally Kerr
• Introduction to workshop format/familiarity exercises with Miro platform

Role of data – For you

• Task: "There are lots of different activities that you may do with the data. We'd like to find out more about those with this exercise and discussion. Please describe in your own words what you do with data then we will have a group discussion about your responses."
• Purpose: To identify the actions/activities that participants perform with data
• Format:
  • Sticky notes created by each participant in Miro
  • Group discussion via Teams

Role of data – For your team

• Task: "Thinking more widely around the activities that your team does with data, can you add anything that has not alron vi
• eady been covered? In particular, what does your team use data for? What do you do with that data and what wider purpose does it serve?"
• Purpose: To identify how the role of data within the participants' teams might differ from the personal perspective in the previous task.
• Format:
  • Sticky notes created by each participant in Miro
  • Group discussion via Teams

Barriers/issues/challenges

• Task: "When you work with data are there any stages that are particularly difficult or time-consuming? Why? What could be done to resolve these issues for you?"
• Purpose: To identify factors that may be preventing or restricting participants ability to work with data
• Format:
  • Sticky notes created by each participant in Miro
  • Group discussion via Teams

Improvements

• Task: "What are the top 5 things that you (or someone else) could do to improve how you and your team work with data? And what external factors would need to change to help you in this regard?"
• Purpose: To discover participants' perceptions of measures that could address any issues they experience in relation to data
• Format:
  • Sticky notes created by each participant in Miro
  • Group discussion via Teams