Bridging the gap: The importance of leadership and people in data strategy success

In our recent webinar reviewing the key findings of the Data in Regulation report, panellist Vikas Dhawan answers questions from panel facilitator Naomi Nicholson on the importance of leadership and culture for any data and insights-informed regulator, and how to operate a ‘people-first’ approach to data strategy development.

Note: The following content is an edited transcript from the Data in Regulation webinar. The views expressed are personal.

Topic 1: The impact of good leadership on an organisation's approach to data

Naomi Nicholson: So one of the key insights from regulators taking part in our research was the importance of leadership and culture in driving that journey to become a data and insights-informed regulator. Vikas, you've worked across different regulators. Can you tell us a bit about the impact of good leadership on an organisation's approach to working with data?

The most obvious area is investment – we need investment for recruiting and retaining people and for the right tools, technologies and systems. Where there are resource constraints, it gets even more important to prioritise and make the leadership understand the value of data and what it brings to the organisation.

When I say ‘leadership’, I mean the executive directors, the chief executive and the board. And the rest of us are the data community, so to speak.

Vikas Dhawan: So the role of leadership is absolutely vital to build a data-enabled organisation, and an organisation which has data-led culture embedded in it.

The most obvious area is investment – we need investment for recruiting and retaining people and for the right tools, technologies and systems. Where there are resource constraints, it gets even more important to prioritise and make the leadership understand the value of data and what it brings to the organisation.

When I say ‘leadership’, I mean the executive directors, the chief executive and the board. And the rest of us are the data community, so to speak.

I think the second area where leadership is important is setting the direction and the vision for the organisation. For regulators, data and evidence are the backbone of regulatory decisions. There’s a crucial role for leadership to play in driving the organisation in using data and evidence and then embedding this behaviour throughout the organisation. Leaders, in this case, have to lead by example. Use evidence, even if the results are not always comfortable. I think the leaders also need to be clear – what is the aim of the data ecosystem in the organisation? So I think that's the test you have to keep in mind: ‘where do you want to go’ with your data ecosystem? Are you concerned with analysing historical trends or answering parliamentary questions, reporting official statistics for the public? Or do you want to start moving to more business intelligence for decision making? Or towards more predictive analysis, understanding behaviours, risk in industries that you regulate? Or even further, wanting to do bit more thought-leadership in the industry? You need to be clear on that.

For regulators, data and evidence are the backbone of regulatory decisions.

Vikas Dhawan

Head of Data Strategy - Office of Rail and Road

To make all this happen, I think we need the leaders to lend weight to your data ambitions as a data community. We need support from the leadership to implement data strategies, to improve data maturity and literacy, to embed data-led culture in the organisation, and even to innovate and experiment, new technologies, AI, large language models, etc.

Finally, I think it's important that to realise our data ambitions, we need to have the right kind of data governance and data leadership in place. And that's something which leaders need to recognise. I know some organisations have a central data office where all the data activities are unified. Some organisations may have separate data units to the research and policy areas. I think it's also important to understand the links with the data and digital and technology areas. As part of DDaT (Digital, Data and Technology), some government departments I know have a joint data and digital governance, which may work better for them. Some others, they are separate data units for digital and technology. So it's about understanding what works in an organisation and then putting those structures in place.

I know it’s easier said than done. It is not easy to implement. But if it's not working, I think leadership needs to be prepared to change things. And then of course, manage and sell that change to the organisation.

The last thing I would say is I think we in the data community have the responsibility to help senior leaders understand the value of data and evidence for monitoring regulatory compliance, or for internal operations. 

Topic 2: ORR's data strategy and the benefits of taking a people-first approach

Naomi Nicholson: Yes, one of the insights in the report is that data doesn't come quick or cheap. There is that investment needed, isn't there? Just leading on from that, there's a brilliant case study in the research about how you've been engaging ORR staff in developing your data strategy. Can you tell us a bit about how you've done that, and what you see is the benefits of taking a people-first approach?

Vikas Dhawan: Yeah, sure. Just a bit of context before that – here at the Office of Rail and Road, we regulate the rail industry and also monitor national highways. We collect data and publish official stats on the rail industry, and a number of statistics and interactive dashboards which we publish on our data portal.

I joined in January 2023 and the ambition of the organisation was to get more value out of data, and the ask was to develop the data strategy. Now, I was clear that it had to be a people-based approach. So to understand the situation, I had one-to-one discussions with nearly 50 colleagues in the organisation throughout different Directorates and teams, which helped me to understand the strengths in the system and the areas that we needed to address.

I also had interactions with the executive team – the Chief Executive and the Board – and understood their expectations and their vision of what we want to do with our data and data ecosystem. After that, I wanted to get views and ideas and requirements from all our people, not just a select sample. So, we designed a bespoke survey to gather staff views and requirements. And there were a number of discussions and brainstorming sessions to design the survey and test the survey. I think that itself generated some very useful insights for me which help in designing the strategy.

We wanted to explore the survey results in more detail so held focused workshops with some stakeholders, again spread across Directorates, which again proved very useful to firm up my understanding. Finally, we wanted to develop a more structured understanding of data maturity, which could also give us a baseline to track in future years. So that's something which we did for the first time. A data maturity assessment exercise, with participants selected from across different teams, roles and salary grades. We used an external agency, but there is a self-assessment tool published by the Central Digital and Data Office, which is free to use.

We used evidence from all the staff engagement and data maturity assessment to develop our data strategy, which was launched in October last year (2023). And we also promoted the strategy through various internal seminars and blogs and meetings, which was good to socialise the strategy.

People are the most important asset for us and for any organisation. Briefly on the benefits of this people-first approach: there is no better approach in my view of designing a data strategy.

Vikas Dhawan

Head of Data Strategy – Office of Rail and Road

People are the most important asset for us and for any organisation. Briefly on the benefits of this people-first approach: there is no better approach in my view of designing a data strategy. We created huge momentum in designing the strategy, which led to us coming top of the league in all civil service departments in ‘One Big Thing’.

The strategy was developed using staff feedback, so that helped in gaining staff buy-in. Because of that we're hoping it will be easier to embed the strategy as we start to implement a change programme as part of that.

The final thing I want to say is, now that we have the strategy in place, we have developed an implementation plan to deliver the strategy. What we have done is we have opened all the workstreams to all our people, which means people with different skillsets, not just data analytics, but project management, policy, regulation, engagement, etc., can come and work on data strategy projects. I think that again will help us to embed the strategy where it matters the most, which is with our people.

Further information

• To watch the full panel discussion, view the Data in Regulation webinar on demand here
• To download the Data in Regulation report, click here

Vikas Dhawan  Head of Data Strategy, Office of Rail and Road Vikas Dhawan works as head of data strategy at the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), which regulates health and safety on the railways, protects the interests of rail and road users, and holds National Highways to account. He has led the development of ORR’s data strategy as well as assessing organisation’s data maturity, and is championing a number of data initiatives in the organisation, including data governance, data literacy, data processes and automation, and on new technologies (AI, Large Language Models). He has previously worked at Ofqual, the exams regulator, as associate director, data and analytics, leading a team of analysts and researchers where he introduced the award-winning interactive dashboards showing qualifications data. Prior to that he worked as an analyst at Cambridge Assessment (part of the University of Cambridge).

Naomi Nicholson Regulatory Consultant Naomi is an experienced regulatory leader, currently working as Director of her own regulatory consultancy. She has 12 years’ experience across healthcare and education regulation and has held positions in government bodies for 15 years. Naomi’s regulatory roles include directorships at Ofqual and the Health and Care Professions Council. She is also a founding trustee of the Institute for Regulation where she established and chairs the Institute’s Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Group.