RSS executive director Hetan Shah explains what the RSS strategy is and what it means for members.
The vision of the RSS is a world with data at the heart of understanding and decision-making. Our strategy to move towards this vision has four main prongs:
- We work as a learned society to strengthen the discipline of statistics;
- We work as a professional body to support the profession of statistics;
- We work as a charitable organisation to promote the use of statistics in the public interest; and
- We work as an educational body to improve statistical literacy.
Each of these strands of work is led by a vice president, and overseen by the president, executive committee and council.
During our current strategic period of 2018-2022 we have two particular themes we are focused upon across all of these strategic objectives. The first is engaging our members to help us deliver these goals. We do this through a range of mechanisms, including our local groups, sections, volunteering activities, events, as well as regular communication with members. The second cross-cutting theme we are working on is the rise of 'data science' and what it means for our work and that of statisticians.
Obviously there are a wide range of views about what data science is and its implications - the RSS council took a clear view that we should be a broad and inclusive church. In particular there are new challenges for statisticians around analysing large unstructured datasets, but equally there are analytical skills which statisticians bring to the table which not all those coming to 'data science' may be familiar with. The Society has a relatively new Data Science Section which provides a focal point for some of our thinking, but we are also considering what it means across all of our activities.
Despite being a relatively small organisation, we hope to have a big impact. The only way we can achieve this is by having you, our members, involved. That's why we've developed Members' Week - to showcase all of the work you are doing through the Society, and to show the world why statistics is so important.
You can view and download our strategic plan here (PDF).