Neil McIvor

Chief Data Officer and Chief Statistician, Department for Education

Neil McIvor became the Chief Data Officer and Chief Statistician at the Department for Education in October 2017. Neil started his Career in the Civil Service in 2001, becoming a professionally accredited statistician in 2003. Neil joined the Department for Work and Pensions in 2004, where his first role was to build a billion record pseudoanonymised individual level database, linking benefit and employment spells for all UK adults that had been on welfare benefits at some point since 1998. This Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study became the backbone for social analysis of welfare and employment out the 2000’s and 2010’s.

Neil also spent some time as lead analyst on disability employment issues, before becoming policy lead for specialist disability employment, and disability benefits.

In 2012, Neil returned to his statistical roots, to become the Department for Work and Pensions Deputy Head of Profession for Statistics, and became DWP’s temporary Chief Data Officer in 2016, before moving briefly to the Office for National Statistics to run Business Data Operations, and Student Migration statistics, before moving to his current role.