Working with Data Cymru on DataBasicCymru

How it started 

It all started with an audit report.  

Audit Wales (then known as the Auditor General for Wales) published a review into ‘The maturity of local government in use of data’. It concluded that local authorities were slowly developing a culture that values and uses data to its full potential.  

We started talking to Data Cymru about how we could go about accelerating that cultural development. Culture is hard to change and takes a long time. It emerges from the many interactions and conversations that take place across an organisation. You can’t really decide that you’re going to make an organisation have a particular culture.  

What you can do is enable people to have better conversations around data. You can build the fluency of staff around data. 

Luckily there already existed a set of materials to support organisations: databasic.io and the Data Culture Project created by Rahul Bhargava & Catherine D'Ignazio. These are publicly and freely available to use and remix. 

We ran a two day session with some Powys County Council staff where we ran through the databasic.io workshops one after the other. This persuaded us that these materials were really good. 

Data Cymru agreed to fund the development of a distinctly Welsh set of materials (in Cymraeg as well as English but also with some distinctively Welsh datasets). Covid rather delayed things but in June 2021 we finally launched the DataBasicCymru site. This is available for anyone in Wales to use, not just local authorities. 

How it’s going 

We’ve used these materials to deliver data fluency programmes with several local authorities in Wales and initial feedback has been very positive. As a facilitator I have to say, they are extremely well designed and over the past couple of years I have learned to trust the process. 

Data Cymru has secured funding to continue offering these programmes in the 2022/23 financial year. If you work in local government in Wales I really encourage you to take the opportunity. 

Even if you don’t work in local government I encourage you to look at DataBasicCymru. If you don’t work in Wales check out databasic.io. 

It’s been really great to work with Data Cymru on this project and we look forward to working with them again in the future. 

Ben Proctor is Data and Digital Innovation Director at Data Orchard.