Exploring the career and life journey of... Douglas Drew

HYPHENHow did you first develop an interest in statistics? What led you into that line of work?

Douglas DrewWhen I was growing up in Nova Scotia, I never had any intention of becoming a statistician. When I started university – the “plan” was for me to become a dentist. I was studying chemistry to help me get there but I was a real klutz in the lab and I didn’t enjoy it. I liked working with my mind rather than my hands, so I switched to mathematics and then realised I was more interested in statistics because it had more applications.

I worked for a master's in statistics and after enrolling in a programme that helped university students find summer jobs, I got an offer from Stats Canada in Ottawa. I enjoyed that experience and when I finished university, I applied for a government job – lo and behold, it was with the same group that I had worked for that summer and the rest is history. I think it was a pretty good choice!

HYPHEN That’s quite an interesting and slightly serendipitous start to your career – what was the experience like when you worked with Statistics Canada permanently?

Douglas Drew I started in their methodology group with statisticians who design surveys, look at sample selection and how to do the estimation for the final results.

For most of my time with that group, I worked on the labour force survey. The first thing I was involved in was a redesign of that, which is done every 10 years. It was a great experience, looking at every step as if you were starting afresh – keep certain elements and improving others in response to changes in needs, technology advances and the like. I was later involved in two more sample redesigns of the survey.

Another of my most significant accomplishments came while I was heading up the research section within methodology and my team piloted the development and use of an Address Register in the late 1980s. We followed statistical methodology proposed in the 1950s which turned out not to be feasible then, but computing advances by the 80s made it possible. Management gave me a pilot project for one province and it was a success; now, it’s a fixed part of StatCan’s infrastructure, so I was proud of proving it could be done.

After that, I become the manager of the labour force survey. A number of different departments contributed to it, and I was responsible for the overall management, which involved running the survey operations and producing the results. I would also do TV and radio interviews on press release day.

I then went on to head up the education statistics programme and that led to another opportunity with the UNESCO Institute of Statistics in Montreal. The institute worked with data from all UN member countries – more than 200 of them – and I was in charge of statistical capacity building.

HYPHEN How did the UNESCO job compare and contrast to the Statistics Canada roles you held? Can you explain what it involved?

Douglas Drew One of the main focuses was working in less developed countries that had challenges in producing and providing data to the institute. UNESCO’s traditional role is to provide technical assistance via regional workshops with seven or eight countries at a time to explain concepts and how to complete the questionnaires. Statistical capacity building involved short missions to work more intensively with individual countries to strengthen the production of education statistics, not only for international reporting but for use by national decision-makers.

I worked with UNESCO for four years and during that time, I visited more than 20 countries in Africa and about five or six countries in East Asia. My team and I assessed areas that needed strengthening, helped national authorities prepare action plans to address these, and provided technical assistance in implementing the action plans.

It also gave me a chance to see how different countries operated with differing levels of resources – and I was quite impressed by what I saw in most instances. Statistics Canada, as an example of a national statistics office in a developed country, had roughly 4,000 employees whereas developing countries might only have a couple of hundred people. Even with fewer people and less computing capacity, they got the basics done and the typical employee was a jack of all trades – doing many different surveys and producing decent results. I had a lot of appreciation for their expertise and dedication.

Stats Canada was a big, highly developed organisation so improvements there were typically incremental building on an already well-established base. In a less developed environment, there is an opportunity to help countries make big, fundamental improvements in a short period of time. I found it very personally rewarding to help in that way and that’s an important part of why I’ve been doing consulting work for the last 17 or 18 years.

HYPHEN Before we get into your work with us, what would you say have been the main differences between working for UNESCO and working as a consultant?

Douglas Drew I wanted to proceed in a somewhat different way than UNESCO traditionally did when looking to improve education statistics. My thoughts on providing technical assistance were that if countries didn’t have suitable surveys to generate information, advice alone wouldn’t be very productive. Ultimately, I left UNESCO to work for organisations interested in doing the ‘heavy lifting’ to help countries make such fundamental improvements.

Hyphen You mentioned there that consulting has at times felt like you were in charge of everything – has working with us felt different in the respect that you have more support now?

Douglas Drew Every detail is taken care of with Hyphen and there is always support so experts can just concentrate on their role as experts – in my experience, that’s rare. A lot of the time while I’ve been consulting, you end up in a country and have to make all these arrangements yourself, which takes a lot of time and effort.

The support team at Hyphen is excellent. One example is travel. On periodic visits to the client, Hyphen has provided literal door-to-door support – someone picks me up at home and then when I get to the destination, there’s someone there to pick me up and take me to the hotel. All logistics while on site are taken care of. This makes life as an expert more enjoyable and productive.

HYPHEN It sounds like this has freed you up to focus on the more technical aspects of the job – is that fair to say? How would you describe your experiences on this engagement?

Douglas Drew We’ve got a good group of experts and we’re working in a highly intellectual environment with people on the client side who are quickly picking up both the strategic and technical aspects.

Avinash has done an excellent job in building a team of experts and has been brilliant with me. Maybe I’m a little biased but the client seems happy and has expanded the project beyond just the labour force survey to include other survey programs.

It’s also great to deal with senior leadership to see the challenges they face. When you can sit with ministers and exchange ideas, it’s a rare and rewarding opportunity to make a real and positive contribution.

Avi and the team really look after things – there are no distractions – so that facilitates a good working environment and has been one of the biggest positives of working with Hyphen.

Douglas Drew It didn’t put me off working, no. I would say three things motivate me to keep doing it now. I get satisfaction from feeling I’m making a positive contribution, whether it be helping a country, a statistical agency or even just a few people; I still really enjoy the work; and I find the work helps keep me mentally sharp.

Going back to the Sierra Leone project, after I left, the project continued, and I worked virtually with the rest of the team – Sierra Leone nationals still on site. Working virtually was harder then than it is now. I don’t think we had video for calls, just audio, and it was complicated to show things on screen at the same time, so tools like Zoom have made a big impact.

Technology has made remote working viable. For me, it has solved the past dilemma of living two separate lives. Work can be done virtually, supported by the occasional client visit, while not sacrificing my real life. Had this project been on-site for two or three years, I would never have been interested.

Hyphen Another thing I would like to discuss is the proliferation of statistics. It seems like they are everywhere now – sports statistics are popular, there are endless political polls, financial and economic analyses, etc. – so what do you think is the main reason for this explosion of stats?

Douglas Drew In part, I think it's fuelled by our increased ability to produce them as we have more computing power and data but I think there’s also a greater demand for them. Elections, sports and gambling are just a few examples of where people are taking a lot of interest in numbers.

You can now find anything – take, for example, the career statistics of a professional athlete, you can find their stats and about 20 different indicators that most people don’t understand because we have more resources to compile and analyse those numbers.

In some cases, I think the ability to generate these numbers is what is driving innovation as well. The whole field of statistics is relatively new but it’s probably viewed as quite important by governments with responsibility for managing national economies and the social wellbeing of citizens – for example, looking after healthcare – so I think there’s growing importance in having this information.

Hyphen Earlier on you talked about the countries you visited as part of your work – is travel something you like to do in your free time? What else do you do when you’re not working?

Douglas Drew When I was growing up, I was always interested in golf and I started playing when I was around 10. I got down to a handicap of about four at one point. I played a lot with my son when he was a junior. Also in the mid-1970s with the growing popularity of aerobics, I took up running and completed two marathons. I later took up hiking, cycling and Nordic walking, and to this day I try and do one of these most days.

My wife and I made a conscious decision to travel and go on at least one major vacation every year. Both of our parents had plans for retirement and never ended up doing them so we have travelled every year since 2005.

We stopped for Covid but since then we have been going on about three trips per year to make up for lost time. This year, we are going on a cruise starting in Argentina and going up the Atlantic to Brazil and the Amazon River; we are also going to go on a Danube cruise from Romania to Germany; and we plan to go to the Chilean fjords and Patagonia.

My wife and I feel extremely lucky to have our son and daughter and their families living close by in Ottawa. It is a special joy to see our two grandsons and granddaughter growing up – too quickly I might add!

After everything I said about not wanting to live two lives earlier, I now consider myself to have the best of both worlds – doing work I enjoy, living with my immediate and extended family and friends nearby, and travelling as often as I would like.