Implementing a data strategy at Ambitious about Autism
Project: Ambitious About Autism
Date: June – December 2021
Work: Data strategy implementation
About the charity
Ambitious about Autism is the national charity standing with autistic children and young people. The charity operates specialist schools and a college, runs employment and youth programmes for autistic people and offers training and consultancy services.
Developing a data strategy and roadmap
Data Orchard was commissioned by Ambitious about Autism to support the development of a new data strategy and accompanying roadmap. Rooted in evidence, and using a collaborative approach, we: identified strengths, weaknesses, and priorities for action; helped get buy-in from senior leaders into the strategy; and increased knowledge and understanding about data among staff.
To gain an understanding of where the organisation was at, an organisational data maturity assessment was completed by 89 staff; with detailed analysis including internal benchmarking and customised questions. We also interviewed staff to map data and digital asset.
We then produced and presented key findings from this discovery phase to the leadership team.
We then ran two workshops with staff to develop a data strategy and road map; produced a data strategy and roadmap report, which were presented to the leadership team.
A year on
Almost a year later, in October 2022, our Co-Chief Executive Madeleine Spinks caught up with the organisation to find out how they'd got on. Ambitious about Autism has made great progress. The charity has:
Implemented a new learning management system and is in the process of implementing a new HR system.
Agreed to replace its educational management information system in several schools with a cloud-based system. This is to reduce the range of tools used, reduce duplication of recording and make it easier to pull data together.
Ambitious about Autism continues on its data maturity journey, to use data to support autistic children and young people.
Paul Breckell, Deputy Chief Executive, said:
“It has given us a data strategy which was very much needed and has increased the profile of the area of work internally”.