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Data Upskilling Program

A common concern from GovTech CIOs is “I’m not worried about the people who grow and leave us, it’s the people that don’t grow and stay.” Employees are one of the biggest assets for the City and it has increasingly become important for the City to invest in the employees to allow them and the organization to grow.

Based on the direction from the City Council, the City's IT department is building skills and collaborating with other departments on equity through data efforts so that its not a only a few staff, but many staff integrating data into their work in the City.

What is Data Upskilling?

City staff is equipped with deep domain knowledge in their respective areas. The data upskilling program is designed for the subject matter experts  (SME) who already understand their department's data but require more technical knowledge to execute a type of analysis that can extract patterns and insights from their data. Because these SMEs know and see where the data is coming from and they work closely with the decision makers they have a better feel for its accuracy, reliability and utility. These SMEs bring a problem statement from their work and go through a curriculum that will train them on the skillsets needed for analyzing data that they use to solve the problem and take the solution back to their respective teams. 

The expected outcomes of the program are as follows - 

  • Data-savvy City staff

  • Final capstone project for department

  • Data science community of practice

  • Certificate of completion

  • Professional growth 

Phase 1: (April 2023 - Mar 2024)

As part of the first phase of the upskilling program IT department    

  • In partnership with the Human Resources department conducted user interviews across multiple departments in the City to understand their needs

  • Evaluated multiple in-person and online certificate options and selected the Coursera IBM Certificate course

  • Established the application process utilizing the data chartering process with the goal of clarifying the problem statement and aligning all the requirements for the projects upfront for a smooth execution

  • Hired a teaching assistant from SJSU to dedicated to support this program

  • Created a cohort of 15 City staff members from Information Technology, Library, and Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services (PRNS) departments to go through Coursera certificate

The following are the projects in this cohort. 

 Department  Project Title

Information Technology

Broadband and Digital Inclusion Dashboard 

Information Technology

Text to 311

Library

Library Marketing Research Analysis

Library

Technology Equipment Utilization (Hotspot & Chromebooks)

Library

Assessment of Success in Library Learning Outcomes

Library

Resource sharing trends informing our collection development decisions

Library

Teens Services and Opportunities

Library

Partners in Reading (PAR) Demographic and Community Analysis

Library

Understanding Teen Delinquency in the Library 

Library

Using SJPL’s Equity Index to plan community programming

PRNS

Key Performance Indicators for Parks Facilities and Programs 

PRNS

PRNS Organizational Development and Equity Assessment for future staffing 

PRNS

Equitable Distribution of Park Maintenance Resources

PRNS

Beautify SJ service reporting

The program is currently in-progress, updates will be made to this page as it progresses.  

Phase 2: 

 This phase will begin after the first cohort completes in March 2024. The goal for this phase will be - 

  • Feasibility analysis for long term execution

  • Build a Community of Data Science experts

  • Build a pipeline of data stories for better engagement through data

  • Identify more datasets and integrate with the Enterprise Data Analytics platform