For our August Spotlight we spoke to Michael Amon, PhD. Michael is Director of Information and Data Management at the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. Read on to hear about Michael's career journey into the world of data, career highlights, and how to give data context and meaning.
1. How did you start your career in data? Was it something that always interested you, or something you discovered later on in your career journey?
I started off in academia getting a PhD in Medicine (drug design and delivery). So I guess from there I started my journey in designing experiments, identifying what data I needed, how it would be saved, used, and reported on. From there I eventually landed a position in the Dept of Industry’s Evaluation Unit where I was leading a team of about 15-ish design and implement monitoring and evaluation frameworks to conducting or managing evaluations. I then moved on a few times and ended up leading a new team at the Attorney-General’s Department under their new Chief Data Officer to establish a data governance team and we drafted their 1st and 2nd Data Strategies. Now I’m at the Office of Parliamentary Counsel running the Information and Data Management team where we cover data governance and analytics and information management and access (Freedom of Information and Content Manager things).
2. Can you tell us about a project or initiative that's had an impact you're proud of?
While working at the Dept of Industry a few years ago, I was privileged to be able to oversee a complete redesign of their Corporate Performance Framework as published in the Corporate Plan and Annual Report. We had to cut the number of performance metrics down from like over 150 to about 15. This was a very big job. But we ended up creating a performance framework with metrics from across the whole department which did a decent job at representing what the department was trying to do at that time and highlighting why those metrics mattered to the public. This work ended up being recognised by the Dept of Finance as a better-practice example on their website. But I am probably most proud of this as you could see how the work supported the department to improve its reporting capabilities and align its public facing performance measures with the understanding that they will change as certain programs grow and mature.
3. What do you love most about working with data?
Over the past few years, it’s been really lovely to see the importance placed on data and its use across Government. And that I’ve been privileged to be a part of some truly excellent work - like being on the working group which drafted the Framework for Governance of Indigenous Data, and working towards its implementation, has been such a great honour.
4. What's something you know now that you wish you'd known earlier in your career?
Culture change is slow. I know most of us appreciate this, but even then, it is slow. And it takes constant effort to make sure that your data culture is not just growing because you have a few personalities promoting it, but that you are able to get that critical mass of staff that know enough about what data is and how it can be used so that new staff are indoctrinated into a data culture by whichever team they happen to be in.
5. When not at work, where would we find you?
Playing music somewhere. I play a lot of solo music gigs around (Amonymous - yes, shameless self-promotion!!) and am in 4 bands, so I tend to have at least one gig every week.
6. Do you have a book, podcast or talk that's had an impact on your work or how you see data that you'd like to share with our Community?
I’m going to take a different route here and say ‘talk to people.’ It doesn’t matter how much you think you know about data, the context of that data is super important. Knowing who is impacted by data can help us understand that data and what it means. So when looking at data and its lifecycle, I keep the phrase, ‘Nothing about us without us’ as a mantra. And to implement this phrase, talk to people 😊