Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS) is seeking a Chief Analytics Officer (CAO) to lead its data analysis strategy and manage analytics so that human services leaders can make decisions that improve program performance and meet the organization’s goals. The CAO will design and lead initiatives to conduct analyses and create reports, visualizations and tools for internal and external stakeholders’ use. These stakeholders include program managers and staff (for example, caseworkers who assist children and families and homeless shelter staff), and DHS’s director, senior staff and the County Manager, who need to evaluate program performance and direct DHS in meeting its mission and goals. The CAO will be an integral part of the DHS leadership team, with great freedom to innovate to achieve our mission.

The CAO will be assisted by 7 direct reports who manage analytic units (Children, Youth and Families, Behavioral Health, Housing and Homelessness, Aging, Criminal Justice, Client Experience, Education and Fiscal), as well as ~25 analysts managed by the direct reports who use data to build analytic reports, publications, dashboards and tools that support staff and community-based providers in better serving Allegheny County’s most vulnerable people. The CAO will operationalize the vision and be an ambassador for leveraging data as an asset to support DHS’s data-driven culture. Additional responsibilities will include:

Managing Analytics Strategy

• Leading strategy that supports the organization in identifying and then answering the most important questions facing the human services system: questions that will impact program performance, fairness and customer satisfaction.
• Leading strategy to provide information to the public, democratizing analyses and data whenever possible.
• Implementing next generation tools, including predictive analytics to get the right information to the right people at the right time.
• Maintaining pulse of industry trends to sustain DHS’s place at the forefront of analytics while also closing any existing gaps.
• Recommending data, technology and system architecture that meet best-in-class standards to provide opportunities for organization and storage across Allegheny County systems.

Leading Analytics Data Team

• Managing and supporting collaboration among analytic units to advance and promote the DHS research agenda, particularly focusing on the use of integrated data; and with the other offices of DHS.
• Fostering a department culture that empowers, motivates and engages staff; that provides excellent service and reliable, high-quality solutions; and that works transparently and collaboratively, taking accountability for individual and team actions and continuously striving to improve.
• Ensuring that the analytic teams balance the information needs of the community, front-line staff and management.
• Managing external consultants to ensure projects assigned to them are completed in a timely fashion and potential risks are identified and mitigated.
• Enhancing and managing data governance process for data decision-making.

Managing Collaborative Partnerships

• Collaborating with stakeholders from multiple – sometimes disparate – perspectives to ensure evaluations and analyses are timely and address concerns.
• Implementing and maintaining key performance indicators for both internal and external metrics to evaluate program and provider performance.

Publishing Research

• Responsible for the accuracy of all content available at AlleghenyCountyAnalytics.us; and for assisting in communicating the use and value of DHS-published research.

Our ideal candidate is someone who is:

• A visionary thinker: Someone who passionately seeks out new ideas and ways to strengthen areas of organizational weakness.
• A real leader: Someone who has experience in driving change through an organization. This person is someone who builds strong staff relationships and creates a positive work environment for a talented team of data experts, where the team is motivated to do their best and have clear, challenging, attainable goals and measured outcomes.
• Highly curious: Someone who is driven to know about the programs and services and the people behind the numbers, and who gets out into “the field” to see how our clients, employees and contractors are interacting.
• A problem-solver: This person doesn’t overreact to problems, but gets the facts, gathers others’ perspectives, and then figures out ways of moving forward. This includes having experience in developing analytic approaches to find solutions.
• A colleague: DHS works because we hire partners who support one another in doing good work. This person needs to be able to both speak forthrightly and seek out others’ points of view.
• A good speaker: This person will be comfortable delivering clear, organized, and persuasive messages, including addressing the media on areas of expertise.
• Driven by social justice: A person who wants to pursue a professional path rich with purpose and meaning and to make tangible differences in the lives of others.