In March 2022, Alastair McAlpine was appointed interim Chief Statistician in the Scottish Government, and became Chief Statistician in August 2023.

In his previous post, Ally was a Senior Statistician in the Scottish Government’s Rural and Environmental Sciences and Analytical Services division and headed up the Agricultural and Land-use Statistics and Data Unit. His unit supported a cross-UK project, funded by ADR UK, to link farm business data collected through the Agricultural Census to other public records to bring new insights and evidence to specific issues that affect farmers and their families. Ally was also responsible for publishing the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) in 2016 which is the Scottish Government’s official tool for identifying deprived areas across Scotland. He also led on work to open up the code behind SIMD to encourage its re-usability and facilitate analysts who were linking other data sources to the index.

Ally believes:

Data sources on their own help us understand the world in which we live and work, but by combining our resources we can bring new insights into the fore and as analysts we can help support better outcomes for society. ADR UK have been instrumental in facilitating the work being done throughout Scottish Government units, such as the agricultural unit. They are supporting them to develop new analytical processes that will allow us to bring new evidence to policymakers that will support the agric-community achieve better outcomes in health and education.