Profiles

• Katie Gronow
• Farida Iskandar
• Graham Oliver
• David Cope
• Rob Palmer

Graham Oliver

Reasons for joining GORS

While writing up my PhD, I began looking for jobs both within academia and outside. I still enjoyed my subject, but started to feel I wanted a job that was more engaging on a day-to-day basis, one with a bit of drive and regular engagement with others. Part-time work in a university office while writing up confirmed that the wider world of work could be just as interesting as academic study! Finding OR in government fit my requirements perfectly - it gave me the rapidly changing, exciting environment I'd hoped for, but still required me to think analytically. It was also in the public sector - something that was essential for me to be properly motivated. I had very little knowledge of OR when entering GORS, but soon found out that this is very common - OR itself is a very cross-discipline area - and that my natural inclination towards structuring problems and complex situations fitted in very well.

Career path and experience

I began my GORS career working in a team responsible for the analysis of employment programmes for people on disability benefits. It involved wrestling with large (60 million+) databases to produce various statistical analyses and reports, and working in quite a high profile area at the time - welfare reform. I also worked on projects using VBA to produce tools for front-line advisers. On promotion to GORS Level 2, I decided to try out something a bit different. I had a variety of options - pensions forecasting, economic modeling - but I decided to move to the Child Poverty Unit.

Current role and responsibilities

I currently work in the Child Poverty Unit, a cross-government unit responsible for the Government's over-arching strategy on child poverty as well as for engaging and supporting local authorities in their work on child poverty. My role partly involves managing a contract with an external research company as they evaluate activity being run in some local authorities. I also play a wider role overseeing evaluations of a variety of other activity across government, ensuring it is both analytically rigorous and has a child poverty focus. Alongside this, I provide ad-hoc analytical support and advice to other colleagues in the unit: helping to structure messy situations; advising on survey design; inputting on guidance to local authorities on the use of central government data; etc.

Life in GORS

While we're all directly employed by one department or another, GORS provides a strong professional network across government. I've presented work at local seminars and national conferences. The number of operational researchers in government is growing as our value is recognised, and GORS provides the opportunity to talk to other operational researchers in other departments, who have often tackled similar problems, or have interesting ideas to share. Many people play an active role supporting GORS: in my case I help plan and organise events, whether technical training, local seminar, or informal workshops; and previously I've helped induct people into GORS as well as inputting into the design of a development programme.