We are recruiting a part-time Policy and Campaigns Associate for Connected by Data on a short-term (renewable) contract.
You will be working with our Director of Advocacy and Campaigns to support our mission to give communities a powerful say in the data and data decisions that affect their lives. Your work will involve developing and delivering research, policy recommendations, briefings, events, blogs, social media and communications outputs alongside other influencing interventions, including one to one meetings and building supportive partnerships and networks.
Your work will all be part of supporting our wider strategy to transform data governance narratives, policy and practice. You will also work closely with other members of the Connected by Data team including the CEO, Research Director and other Campaigns, Policy and Research Associates.
You will be contributing to one or more of a number of our strands of our policy and campaigns work, which may include working on:
- Influencing the UK government: supporting our public affairs strategy to influence the passage of the forthcoming Data Protection and Digital Information bill and development of future party manifestos to ensure the collective impacts of data and AI are recognised and more democratic governance of data and AI are incorporated.
- Civil Society Support and Coalition building: researching and building relationships and networks with ‘issue focused’ social justice and civil society organisations to help them understand how data and AI affects the people they are there to serve. Supporting coalition building work around this, helping communities and the organisations that represent them to act for change on data and AI.
- Data narratives development: building on our ongoing work to understand how the impacts of data are discussed in media narratives, and carrying out primary research to identify and support the development of stories that demonstrate the importance of understanding collective impacts of data collection, sharing and use. Developing these stories into potential comms outputs for range of channels.
- Policy research, monitoring and networking: keeping across data policy developments and contributing to policy analysis and briefings in other areas both EU and Global. Engaging with and representing Connected by Data in relevant European and Global networks to support this
- Social Media: helping communicate the above areas through our blog and social media channels
The exact focus of your work will be agreed with the Advocacy and Campaigns Director, with regular opportunities to reflect, review and refine the work to fit your skill set, respond to organisational priorities, and support your own professional development.
Who are you?
As our Advocacy and Campaigns Associate you should have:
- Experience of delivering policy and influencing campaigns in the UK political system, including working directly with politicians, advisors and civil servants
- Experience of working in partnership with other social justice and civil society organisations to deliver impactful policy and political change
- Demonstrated research skills to support campaigns and influence work, including literature reviews, case study development, interviews, surveys, content and thematic analysis
- Interest and experience researching and developing policy and campaigns on hot topics in data, digital, AI and democratic participation.
- Clear written and verbal communication for public, political and policy audiences
- A commitment to collaborative working, including across organisations
- Ability to flexibly manage a workload that includes both responsive short term tasks, and longer term projects
- Commitment to investing in your own personal and professional development
- Preferably, experience of working across a range of countries and contexts.
You might have formal research, policy or campaigns qualifications, or be coming from an applied background where you have developed these skills ‘on the job’.
We have an organisational commitment to working in the open, sharing our work and reflections as we go through weeknotes and regular blogging / resource sharing. We will support you to join in this practice.
How do we work?
You will be joining a fully remote UK-based small team. We have daily communication on Discord, and regular team calls. We use tools like Google Docs and AirTable for our day-to-day work.
We will agree to regular working hours where you overlap with the Director of Advocacy and Campaigns, and you will have a degree of flexible working around this.
Depending on your location and preference we may offer you an employed position, or an equivalent freelance consultancy contract.
Our employment contract provides for:
- 5 weeks (25 days pro rata) holiday + bank holidays
- 3 days company-wide holiday between Christmas and New Year
- 5% employer pension contributions
We operate a Bring Your Own Device policy for associates.
What are the next steps?
If you are interested in this role, please send a CV and covering letter to jonathan@connectedbydata.org by 8am GMT on Monday 7th November 2022 . The cover letter should describe your skills and experience against the criteria listed above, and why you are interested in the role.
If you have any questions about the role, or want to chat about it before applying, please get in touch with jonathan@connectedbydata.org
If you are not certain that you meet all the criteria, or want to explore a different working pattern, please consider applying anyway; there is some flexibility in the way this role could work.
We would particularly like to see applications from people who are under-represented in current debates about data.