Job Vacancy Analyst - Analysis Insights team

Location: London or Newcastle 

Salary: £42,715 in London and £36,199 in Newcastle

Job descriptionAnalyst - Analysis Insights team
Contract: Permanent
Location: London or Newcastle
Salary: £42,715 in London and £36,199 in Newcastle

Introduction

Thank you for your interest in joining the National Audit Office as an Analyst. This pack will give you a better idea of who we are, what you'll do when you join us, and what we offer. It also explains how to apply.

Our position is unique, and our work is extraordinarily influential. We are independent of government and the civil service and scrutinise public spending for Parliament. This means we work for, and for the good of, everyone in the country. We help society work better - supporting and enabling improvements in the way services are delivered right across the public sector. The recommendations from our work result in financial savings and positive changes in government to improve services and ensure value for money for the taxpayer.

For you, this means work that has a greater value, and offers a greater challenge. You'll tackle complex projects that inform debates and influence some of the biggest decisions that government makes. You'll collaborate with dedicated and talented people toward shared and important goals. And, by taking on new opportunities and challenges, you'll build a rewarding and fascinating career - one that will allow you to make an impact that you, and the nation, can clearly see.

As an Analyst you will join our central Analysis Hub to provide specialist analysis support to teams across the office, and to develop business critical analytical tools. If you like what you see and can meet our requirements, then we want to hear from you.

The Role

Each year we produce around 65 major Value for Money (VFM) reports examining various aspects of government programmes and projects. VFM reports are multi-method reports delivered to demanding timetables. We also publish over 400 financial audit certifications each year.

We want to recruit an Analyst with exceptional quantitative analysis skills to join our central Analysis Hub. Our team provides specialist analytical support and develop business critical tools to teams across the office who deliver value for money reports and financial audit work.

Analysts are expected to spend part of their time developing and using their expertise to contribute to other specialist networks across the office. This includes providing analytical insight and support to others outside of your team on your areas of expertise such as wider analytical techniques and methods, commercial and regulatory issues, digital transformation and data use in the public sector, financial risk and management, major project delivery, and people and operational management.

Nationality Requirement:
   •   UK Nationals
   •   Nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
   •   Nationals from the EU, EEA or Switzerland with (or eligible for) status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)

How to Apply:

If you are interested in applying, you will need to submit your CV and complete the application form (links for both documents are below). Please do not submit any other documents at this stage as these will not be reviewed. Should the system request a covering letter please submit your completed application form.

Applicants will be invited by email to complete a numerical & verbal reasoning online assessment. Following completion of the assessments, an initial eligibility screening on your CV, and a review of your application form will be carried out.

Applicants who are successful at these stages we be invited to complete a case study exercise, and may be invited for final interview.

Please click on the following links to access the candidate pack application and questionnaire form:



The closing deadline for applications is 5:00pm on Monday 7 October 2024.
ResponsibilitiesResponsibilities
The main responsibilities include:

o Analysing and interpreting data on a wide range of relevant public policy topics, using a range of quantitative and advanced analytics methods.

o Working with large datasets to prepare for further analysis.

o Presenting clearly to senior colleagues your findings from complex and technical analysis along with key limitations or caveats.

o Providing written and oral briefings to managers and senior staff to provide assurance over the analysis carried out.

o Providing advice and support to other teams using your analytical expertise.


Relationships and Accountability
You will work in our central Analysis Hub and deliver work to time and budget. Your team leader will be a Senior Audit Manager and you will work closely with other analytical specialists to support others across the office.

The impact you'll make

Right from the start, you'll contribute to work that matters. All our work helps hold government to account for the way it uses public money and helps to promote improvements in public service delivery. The scope of our impact is huge - from health to education to justice to overseas development to the BBC and Bank of England - and much more.

Our recommendations and reports on good practice help government improve public services, and our work in the last year had led to:
O Positive financial impacts of £572 million in 2022-23;
O £7 of positive financial impact for every pound spent in 2022-23; and
O 91% of recommendations to government were accepted or partially accepted.

You can find out a lot more about us and our work from our website -hidden link-. Here are some examples of recent work:

O For our Investigation into the Windrush Compensation Scheme, we used process mining to help the study team understand the Home Office's operation of the scheme. It allowed us to understand the flow of cases through a system, including the time taken for different activities, how resources are used and where bottlenecks occur, and as such can be vital in assessing the performance of the overall process.

O For our report on Regulation of private renting, we conducted exploratory primary analyses using the limited data available to look for relationships between regulatory approaches between local authorities with several outcome indicators. This involved bulk (over 20 million records) data wrangling and associated regression analyses on energy performance certificate data.

O For our Investigation into the performance of HM Passport Office, we used novel analysis to estimate passport application caseload and backlogs, by reverse engineering passport caseload numbers at different points in time from outturn data on number of passports.

O We published an interactive data visualisation, to accompany our report on Integrated Care Systems. This interactive tool provides a map of England allowing users to explore a range of health data for Integrated Care Systems.

O We published an interactive data visualisation, to accompany our report on Childhood obesity. The report looks at the effectiveness of the government's to reducing childhood obesity in England by considering the evidence base and progress so far. People using the tool can explore trends in childhood obesity by among other factors including ethnicity, age, deprivation and area.

O Further interactive visualisations are published here. You can also read more about how we use modelling in our work.Skills requiredSkills required
Abilities

It will be essential that you can demonstrate the ability to:
O Work with large, complex and imperfect datasets.
O Apply quantitative analysis methods to create insights to time and quality.
O Produce clear, well-structured and succinct written work which can be easily understood by non-technical readers.
O Draw valid conclusions that are evidence based and clear about limitations.
O Present complex data or other findings in a way which can be easily understood by the various audiences.
O Work with colleagues to understand their requirements for quantitative analysis.
O Work co-operatively and collaboratively as part of a team to deliver outputs.
O Use a range of software packages especially R and MS Excel to work with and analyse data., and develop quantitative analysis skills in other software such as Python and SQL

In addition, we are looking for candidates with the following attributes:
O Intellectual curiosity, especially about using data and evidence to answer questions.
O Flexibility to make a significant contribution across a range of topics and outputs.
O Strong interest in the work of the NAO and public policy across a range of sectors.
O Attention to detail in documenting and maintaining a reliable audit trail for your work.
O Drive and determination to overcome obstacles, resistance or challenges in order to achieve goals.
O Commitment to personal development and keeping technical skills up to date.Educational requirementsEducation/work experience

A strong academic background. This means either:
O A minimum of a 2:1 degree in a discipline with a substantial quantitative analytical component (e.g. social research methods, economics, statistics, management science/operations research, finance, mathematics, or data analytics) and relevant experience working as an analyst, or;
O A Masters degree with a substantial quantitative or research component