Data Profession: four year report

Foreword

It has been four years since the inception of the Data Profession, and I am thrilled to see its initiatives have continued to progress over the past 12 months. We have continued to build on the initiatives of the first three years and I’m pleased to see several projects delivered in year four.

I am delighted to see continued interest from prospective graduates in having careers in data in the public sector. The 2025 APS Data Graduate recruitment program saw over 1,760 applications and 43 agencies seeking around 300 data graduates.

In the first year of the Data Profession the SES Data Leadership course, which builds foundational skills for the SES, was piloted. It was offered in 2022, 2023 and 2024 and has been attended by 192 SES staff from 26 agencies. Following the SES Data Leadership Course, a similar course for the EL2 cohort commenced this year. There have been two offerings including a pilot so far and the course will run through 2025.

The Data Profession Members’ Community Platform, the web-based platform for data professionals to learn about events, job opportunities, communities of interest and resources relevant to their work, continues to grow. Since its establishment in August 2022, it has grown to over 10,800 members. Also on the platform are my In Conversation videos in which I interview people for whom data plays a big role in their careers. I encourage all public sector data professionals to sign up to the platform.

I look forward to further development of the Data Profession in the year ahead and thank all our partner agencies for their collaboration.

Dr David Gruen AO
Australian Statistician
Head of the Data Profession