SomerStat Analyst

Statement of Duties

Somer Stat, Somerville’s Division of Innovation and Analytics, provides timely analysis and reporting to help City staff and residents measure progress toward community goals and understand local challenges. By combining analytics, performance tracking, and open data, Somer Stat empowers decision‑making, improves city services, and keeps the community informed.

Somer Stat analysts contribute to the core areas of Somer Stat’s work: performance measurement, program evaluation, and analysis support for City staff and constituents. This includes contributing to individual efforts as well as to the development of frameworks that guide our work in these areas.

Analysts work in a multitude of topic areas with varied audiences and time horizons, and are expected to “own” projects from start to finish. Examples of work include developing internal and public‑facing dashboards tracking progress toward the City’s goals; conducting and analyzing results from the biennial Happiness Survey and other survey efforts; and informing social service delivery supporting community welfare.

Below are the types of work an analyst could be expected to perform on a project. Almost no projects contain all these elements, and expertise across the board is not assumed nor required. However, interest in learning how to conduct all the work types below is a must:

• Conceptual clarification:
  Working with City staff and other stakeholders on defining a research question, developing conceptual metrics
• Creating data collection instruments:
  Usually surveys, occasionally other data collection protocols
• Cleaning data:
  Scripting in R for categorization/transformation
• Detail review & quality assurance:
  Data QA, reviewing surveys, memos, and visualizations
• Conducting analysis:
  Using R, GIS, Tableau, or Excel
• Creating visualizations:
  Using Tableau, GIS, or Excel/Power Point
• Creating documentation & communication:
  Usually materials for presentation (slide decks) or narrative (written reports)
• Setting up data pipelines:
  Scripting in R for optimization, automating processes to batch steps
• Advising:
  On data collection and analysis strategy for other teams across the City, taking into account different needs and areas of expertise of our diverse workforce

The essential functions or duties listed below are intended only as illustrations of the various types of work that may be performed. The omission of specific statements of duties does not exclude them from the position if the work is similar, related, or a logical assignment to the position.

• Advances the core areas of Somer Stat’s work by supporting the development and application of our frameworks in performance measurement, program evaluation, and analysis support efforts throughout the City.
• Conducts analysis projects from start to finish, including conceptualization, metric development, data selection or collection, analysis, presentation of findings and recommendations.
• Develops systemic access to appropriate data sources (including collecting new data as needed); creates and maintains automated data extraction and reporting workflows that clean and integrate relevant data to monitor performance and develop recommendations.
• Works independently with various interdisciplinary teams to determine how data analysis can best support municipal operational goals.
• Develops and delivers insightful reports, interactive dashboards, and presentations using visualization tools (e.g., Tableau, ArcGIS) to enable data-informed decision‑making in the organization.
• Provides technical support, cross‑training, and documentation to Somer Stat and other municipal staff in use of Somer Stat’s dashboards and other tools to ensure continued independent use of the developed solutions.
• Supports the City’s commitment to transparency by identifying new sources of data to make available to the public, preparing datasets for public use, and increasing public awareness and understanding of city systems and data.
• Supports the City’s commitment to equity by ensuring that data collected and/or selected for evaluation represent all the communities of Somerville, particularly those who are generally…