About the job

Job summary

This position is based nationally.

Job description

We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.

Do you have the passion, values, and ability to help us solve the biggest problems of the justice system?

Head of Strategy and Delivery (G6) – Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) Programme, Ministry of Justice

Overview

The Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) programme is a cross government programme that seeks to improve outcomes for vulnerable individuals such as victims of crime, offenders, homeless and those with substance misuse dependencies. It aims to link data across various organisations to improve services and outcomes to these individuals through our public services. The programme is a team of around 70 staff that sit across the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Welsh Government (WG). This role is a senior leadership role within this programme and will primarily lead the cross-government programme coordination and management, and the data sharing function, working across all BOLD’s partner departments and strategic programmes. You will be a key member of the cross government BOLD Senior Management Team that has a collective leadership across all participating departments and will work with senior leaders in government on behalf of the BOLD programme.

Roles are open to: 

• Civil Servants – Grade 6 on level transfer and Grade 7 on promotion
• Non-Civil Servants with equivalent experience

Minimum requirements to apply:

Candidates must be able to show the relevant experience and skills and must meet the criteria for entry:

You must meet all of the following:

• You have significant experience of managing projects.
• You have significant experience of leading and managing a team.
• You have experience of working in a strategic environment.

We welcome applications from candidates based across the UK. Candidates will have the option of being based in the Leeds or London HQ offices (with flexible working arrangements available) or your nearest Justice Collaboration Centre or Justice Satellite Office. These are based at the following JCCs: Cardiff, Leeds, Nottingham, South Tyneside, Brighton, Ipswich and Liverpool, and the following JSOs: Ashford, Beverley, Haverfordwest, Hull, Merthyr Tydfil, Manchester, Newport, Birmingham, Sheffield, North Shields, Bristol, Wolverhampton, Weston-Super-Mare, Stafford, Truro, Winchester and Leeds.

Alternative locations may be available and will be discussed and agreed on the completion of background checks.

Interviews will take place in April and will be held via MS Teams. We will keep a merit list for a year for those who successfully pass the interview board but who are not offered a post.

About Data & Analysis

Although this is a cross government role, you will also be part of Ministry of Justice’s Data and Analysis community. We are passionate about improving justice outcomes through innovative research, data and analysis. We provide high quality data and analysis to ensure strategic, policy, finance, corporate and operational decisions are based on robust evidence.

We create a culture in which people are empowered with the data and information to make excellent decisions; using cutting edge tools, techniques, and collaboration; putting evidence at the heart of the justice system.

We are a multi-disciplinary team of around 650 staff that sit at the heart of the Ministry of Justice providing analytical support across a diverse and exciting agenda. We work in a dynamic and fast-paced context and our skills are in heavy demand across the Ministry of Justice. Our collaborations beyond government are seen as ground-breaking. The Data and Analysis community is made up of analysts and specialists including Social Researchers, Economists, Operational Researchers, Statisticians, Data Engineers, Data Scientists and others, such as, data strategists, data dissemination and assurance experts and generalists.

Why work in Data and Analysis?
In Data and Analysis, we want all our people to feel valued for who they are and for the work they do. We provide a warm, inclusive place to work and offer a wide range of flexibilities and benefits as part of our people offer to reward our staff.

What we offer

• Flexible working arrangements and a focus on equality of opportunity – including welcoming part-time and/or job-share arrangements, compressed hours, working from home or your nearest Justice Collaboration Centres or Justice Satellite Office.
• Career development – regular development and promotion opportunities across a wide range of roles, career development support, with a generous individual learning and development budget.
• Range of new areas of work and new tools and techniques – we pride ourselves on our excellent deployment of well-established analytical methods, but also our progress to date. Progress such as our ambitious and innovative transformation programme to leverage departmental data and drive evidence-based decision-making using cutting-edge tools and techniques (for example: experimentation, personalisation, artificial intelligence).
• Analysis is at the centre of the Department’s decision making – our transformation programme is focused on maximising our impact on departmental outcomes. The Ministry of Justice’s Senior Team and our Ministerial Team want all decisions to be evidence driven – your work will be key in influencing decisions and real-world impact.
• Vibrant community – part of a multidisciplinary team that has a supportive culture and is looking to further develop the community with the help of everyone.
• See the frontline and what your work is influencing – regular opportunities to visit our front-line service providers, including courts, prisons, and probation to better understand the areas your work is affecting.

The Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) Programme

The BOLD programme is a cross-government initiative delivered in partnership between the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC), Public Health Wales (PHW)/Welsh Government (WG) and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC).

Public services collect a large amount of data which is used to improve the quality of services offered to the citizen, but it is often not shared between organisations, making it difficult to understand whether certain services have been effective.

The BOLD Programme, backed by investment from HM Treasury, is improving the connectedness of government data so that policymakers and those working on the frontline of UK public services have better quality evidence on what works in supporting victims, reducing homelessness and substance misuse and helping offenders turn their backs on crime. For instance, understanding what services best help prison leavers into work could help to prevent thousands of people becoming victims each year and save some of the £18 billion annual cost of repeat crimes.

The programme has 4 pilot projects focusing on substance misuse, homelessness, victims of crime and reducing reoffending. The pilots aim to demonstrate the ethos behind BOLD, designing new ways of looking at problems, linking data across departmental boundaries, discovering new evidence, and innovating new tools and solutions to improve services, to support adults who interact in different ways with the Criminal Justice System.

What you’ll do

The successful candidate will lead 5 workstreams, with direct management responsibility of 5 teams:

• The Strategy team are responsible for setting the overall direction of the BOLD programme, delivering our data ethics framework and ongoing approach to comms and public engagement, leading our work in deploying service design methodologies into our pilot projects, shaping business cases to apply for future funding and supporting achievement of the BOLD legacy.
• The Delivery team act as the programme PMO, managing programme governance, risk, planning and reporting, and ensuring we manage our programme budget.
• The Data Sharing team are responsible for delivering all programme data shares across BOLD departments. They are also responsible for future proofing our data shares from proof of concept to data sharing pipelines to support the long-term BOLD legacy.
• The Knowledge Management team capture all learnings from across the programme and host on a Knowledge Sharing Site and deliver knowledge sharing training activity.
• The Comms and Engagement team ensure that BOLD is represented across all internal (to BOLD and MoJ) and external communications (pan government), including conferences and awards ceremonies.

The post-holder will work as part of BOLD’s Senior Management Team (SMT) directly reporting to the BOLD Programme Director.

The successful candidate will:  

• Lead data sharing by ensuring all data shares are achieved, existing data shares are revisited to ensure longevity and assist in the development of a Directorate wide central data sharing team.
• Lead the development of BOLD’s future funding approach post 2025.
• Lead the Delivery team to deliver all aspects of programme management, including around risks and issues, dependencies, planning and governance, including quarterly accountability reporting to HM Treasury.
• Lead and sign-off on internal and external comms activities and promote the work of the BOLD programme around government and beyond, spotting opportunities to link up and partner with external projects of relevance.
• Coordinate activities across government on the publication, press handling and policy implications of a number of major analytical publications over the next year, working closely with the relevant pilot policy teams and analysts.
• Mature BOLD’s approach to Data Ethics and manage our wider partnership with the Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation (CDEI), publishing a Data Linking Ethics Playbook for pan government use.
• Lead BOLD’s approach to ongoing public engagement. This will include implementing our long-term public engagement strategy, presenting to interested groups such as the Privacy Lobby and ensuring the programme meets public acceptability tests.
• Proactively explore opportunities and lead work to embed service design approaches into the delivery of our pilot projects.
• Manage the BOLD budget, including delegated sign-off of low-value purchases.
• Deputise for the Programme Director where necessary.

Who you are

The following experience and skills will be required:

• A strategic thinker, with experience of developing and delivering on strategies, ideally related to the use of data.
• An emotionally intelligent manager, with excellent interpersonal skills and ability to build and maintain strong working relationships with partners, stakeholders and colleagues.
• A strong organiser, with the ability to plan and prioritise your own and your team’s workload when faced with competing priorities and able to work at pace.
• A compelling communicator, with strong influencing skills and a demonstrable track record of convincing a range of stakeholders to buy into a change.
• A confident leader, able to inspire others to follow them while being highly credible when presenting to senior leadership.

The following experience and skills are desirable:

• Experience working on cross-government projects or programmes.
• Experience of working in a data and/or analysis environment.

How to apply

You will need to submit an anonymised CV and Statement of Suitability as part of your application. You will not be considered if you do not provide both.

Your CV should be no more than 2 pages long and should show us your work history and previous experience. It should be well structured, succinct, and written in clear language.

Your Statement of Suitability should be no more than 750 words and should give us examples of how your skills and experience match those needed for this role. Consider giving examples that cover all the requirements in the ‘Who you are’ section and use work you have completed to demonstrate how you meet each one. 

Selection Process

There will be an initial sift of applicants through comparing submitted evidence against the ‘Who you are’ bullets. This usually takes two weeks, depending on the number of applications. If large volumes of applications are received, the sift will be conducted focused on the personal statement.

Those who make it through the initial sift will be invited to a Civil Service Success Profile interview. In the Civil Service we use Success Profiles to help us find the right person for the job. We will be using a mixture of methods to assess your abilities, experience and behaviours. We highly recommend learning about Success Profiles and using the Situation, Task, Action, Result and Reflection (STARR) framework when structuring your answers.

The highest scoring candidates that pass the interview will be offered the role. The whole process can take up to a month.

You will be assessed against the Civil service success profiles framework at interview stage:

• Communicating and Influencing  
• Seeing the Bigger Picture
• Delivering at Pace
• Leadership

Please also refer to the CS Behaviours framework for more details at this grade.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/717275/CS_Behaviours_2018.pdf 

Applicants invited for Interview 

You will be required to give a 5-minute presentation at interview. Details of this will be sent to those candidates who are invited for interview.

Further Information

If you require any additional information about the role, please contact: Nisha de Silva (BOLD Programme Director, nisha.desilva@justice.gov.uk).

Person specification

Please refer to Job Description

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £66,314, Ministry of Justice contributes £18,501 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.https://justicejobs.tal.net/vx/candidate/cms/About%20the%20MOJ

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.