Last year we launched the Data Science Accelerator Programme, believing that “time, training and technology” could help government analysts learn data science skills. Participants in the programme dedicate time away from their main job, work with a mentor (training) and …
Data Science combines statistics, programming, machine learning, automatic processing of unstructured data (including text mining) and visualisation. This can seem bewildering - many people are asking where to get started if they want to learn. This blog gives free resources that …
Part II of our blog on the 4th Data Science Show & Tell focuses on sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis is described as the use of machine learning techniques to extract information from unstructured source materials, such as tweets, blogs etc. There …
On the 19th February 2015, GDS hosted the 4th Data Science Show & Tell. The topics of discussion ranged from galaxy classification to data journalism. David Bonfield, an ex-astronomer and a current data scientist at BIS, demonstrated a technique called …
This post describes how techniques like changepoint analysis and sentiment scoring can be used to identify potential problems in a service. Problems such as an unexpected surge in demand can catch a service out. When a service fails to deliver …
December 11th 2014 saw GDS host data analysts from across government at the 3rd Data Science Show & Tell. Interest was high yet again, with enthusiastic participation in the many exciting discussions, one of which was on the topic of …
Are bugs in some web browsers holding people back from completing government services? I recently set out to address this question using data reported to the Performance Platform showing the percentage of people who start and complete all GOV.UK services. …
The field of data science appears to be fast developing within government. I say this after our Government Digital Service (GDS) Show and Tell event where data scientists from different departments and agencies showcased a number of innovative projects, all …
In a world where online surveys are often distributed to understand user needs, the main challenge is no longer the gathering of data but dealing with the vast quantities of responses. When faced with such a daunting analysis task, the …
The UK runs lots of public consultations – over 500 since January!
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