Profile
Iain Bell joined the Office for National Statistics as Deputy National Statistician and Director General, Population and Public Policy in June 2017.
Prior to his role in ONS Iain was the Chief Data Officer and Head of Profession for statistics in the Department for Education. He was responsible for data collection in the Department, school performance tables and policy-facing analytical support across schools, post-16 and teaching policy.
As part of this work he has lead the creation of some of the richest datasets in Government – the Longitudinal Education Outcomes dataset that links pupil data to further and higher education and onto employment and education. Iain also had responsibility for growing the Data Science community within DfE.
Iain has worked in Government since 1993 across a range of different Departments. He has been in the Government Statistical Service for over 20 years. His career in the GSS has spanned labour market, Government Finance, Transport, Justice, work, pensions and education statistics. Throughout his career he has specialised in exploiting the power of administrative data.
