VIDEO | City of Virginia Beach CDO: With Data, Everything Is Fluid

(US and Canada) Bojan Duric, Chief Data Officer, City of Virginia Beach, speaks with Denise Collison, SHI International SVP and President of Public Sector Sales, in a video interview about his professional progression, finding and cultivating talent, and what leaders should do to retain talent within an organization.

Duric shares that it took him 15 years to progress from being a data analyst to a data scientist. He adds that there was no massive change for him through the progression because, with data, everything is fluid.

Data practitioners and leaders evolved as businesses grew and as recognizing data as an asset became a topic, says Duric. He continues that most data practitioners started as a one-man show before attracting talent and having multiple people with different roles.

Highlighting the public sector, Duric states that attracting talent is one of the biggest challenges.

Duric maintains that as a nonprofit, it is hard to compete with the commercial sector, but hiring and retaining talent feels rewarding. From the public sector perspective, he says the key is in finding the purpose and attracting talent by giving meaningful opportunities that have a direct impact on people.

Speaking about cultivating talent, Duric explains that the local government has different business units, departments, and communities of interest, which are silos that sometimes work together. Therefore, cultivating talent would require upskilling and identifying hard skills that employees already have so that they can evolve as swiftly as needed, he adds.

Citing an example, Duric says that a solid on-prem presence, full-time DBAs, SQL, and administrative skills helped in the natural progression toward data engineering roles. Further, this became an opportunity for talent to work on purposeful projects in the new environment, he states.

According to Duric, leaders must inspire employees by engaging them in challenging and impactful projects. He reveals that the organization has created a safe, experimental, and learning space at work, where employees take failing as a stepping stone to success.

Taking this further, Duric addresses the creation of a data academy, the Smart Data Collective, as part of the upskilling process to make people comfortable with data.

He indicates that the collective is the most active data group across organizations where they leverage relevant skills and technologies to stay connected. Leaders need to provide that space to connect, he concludes.

CDO Magazine thanks Bojan Duric for contributing his thought leadership to our global community.