What is your role? I am responsible for handling, calculating, aggregating and reporting on all of the county councils data requirements.

What does your typical day look like? The day starts with some system monitoring tasks to ensure all SCC data has transformed and loaded as expected, pick up any issues with the data. Then if everything is green and good to go, crack into my development work.

As a Data Analyst/Programmer one of the things I like about the job is the variation and differences in your day. One day maybe coding all day, the next trying configurate different data, different requirements.

Why did you join Staffordshire County Council? They were good enough to give a young lad with not many qualifications a chance.

What might people not know about working in the council? Is the range of services and areas of work the council covers from social care, education to waste it is never the same thing.

What is the worst part of your job? Especially in IT, is maybe not being able to jump onto all the latest tools and features as we have to work to defined budgets and standards, sometimes feels like we are behind the curve.

What is the best part of your job? It is something different nearly every day. You don’t know what challenges are going to come your way.

What is your most memorable moment? It was when I was very young and was a mascot for my beloved Sunderland Football Club. Over 30 years ago now but still remember it like yesterday.

What would you be doing if you didn’t work here? I would probably be doing something that I didn’t enjoy, had no passion for and was just working for a pay cheque. (where I don’t really know)

What advice would you give someone considering a career in IT? Explore all the options available, IT is not just fixing PC’s or servers. There is data, there is security, comms, account management, the number of roles and disciplines in IT is far more wide ranging than you can imagine. Explore all the plethora of roles, don’t just think ‘I’m no good with computers’ or ‘I don’t understand IT’. Speaking in terms of data you need structure, maths and some logic to work to. The computer is merely the tool.