New starter onboarding - Performance Analysis
The below covers a variety of information that will be useful to all those joining the performance analysis community in the Government Digital Service. The wider reference information in this section will also be useful, so please do consult that as well.
Remember that it is it’s ok to say what’s ok.
Things to do when you join GDS
When you join GDS as a performance analyst, please make sure to:
- get access to and go through the ‘Welcome to being a Performance Analyst at GDS’ trello board
Get access to useful groups and communities
- join the #analysis and #analysts GDS Slack channels
- get access to the Performance Analysts calendar (ask a Lead Performance Analyst to invite you), and come along to the weekly community hours
- get access to the Performance Analysts Google group, plus any Google groups associated with your team and directorate
- get access to the cross-government Basecamp communities
Learn about how we work
- learn about what it is like to work as a performance analyst embedded in a multidisciplinary team - read this document and talk to your line manager
- learn about performance frameworks
- get familiar with our weeknotes, and contribute your updates at the end of every week
- familiarise yourself with the service manual, design principles, and style guide
- read up on what the rest of GDS is up to the state of data in government
Sort the practical things
- get your line manager to apply for your building pass
- make sure you have access to SOP and the intranet, and understand the core hardware and software we use
- familiarise yourself with Google apps and our Google Drive
Tools for analysts
Key tools that analysts will use are:
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- Looker Studio
Make sure you have access to the right GA4 data sources for your role. Ask your line manager or other performance analysts if you are unsure about whether you have the right access.
We also have some Tableau licences. Speak to others in the analyst community if you would like to use Tableau.
The following may be useful for analysis of users’ journeys:
- DISCO, and the DISCO prep tool
- the forward and reverse path tools
- the spider diagram tool
- the pogosticking tool
- the inferring user journeys tool
Other external tools some analysts in the community use and find useful include:
External reporting that may also be of interest include:
Useful resources for analysts
There is a wealth of information on this site which will be good to know for analysts. In particular, you may wish to read up on:
- our data sources, and particularly our GOV.UK GA4 data source
- our guidance on using GA4 data
- our notes on the use of Looker Studio
- our notes on the use of Google Cloud Platform and Google BigQuery
Other resources that might be useful include:
- the service manual, design principles, and style guide
- this list of the applications supporting GOV.UK, and which teams own them
- this GOV.UK API ‘cheat sheet’
If you have any problems
If you have a problem - about anything - then there are several people you could speak to:
- Your line manager
- A lead analyst
- Your team’s delivery or product manager
- the GDS People Team (you can find them on Slack at #gds-peopleteam)