James Hogan

james@jameshogan.nz

Biography

I enjoy developing creative, innovative, solutions to complex problems which impact on the welfare of New Zealanders. My work supports policy formulation and new initiative development. My ideal role would involve delivering a complex piece of economic/analytical work that is both important for the customer, and analytically insightful from a professional sense.

Unlike most technical developers / programmers, I write very well and have a economic policy-based background: my point of difference.

Skills / Achievements

  • Experienced writer and communicator. I specialise in communicating technical content to non-technical audiences in non-technical language. Experience writing for ministers and senior management.
  • Management experience– 2 years managing a data team at MBIE, 1 at the Ministry of Health.
  • Leadership skills – over 10 years as a Principal Research Analyst developing teams of analysts.
  • Experience in making high performing teams.
  • Applied economic skills – 27 years as an Data Scientist across public and private sectors.
  • Applied programming capability – R programmer, SAS programmer, database developer, web developer.

Experience

Freelance Data Scientist, JamesHogan Ltd July 2019 – Current

Currently contracting to H2R Recruitment as a freelance Data Scientist. I specialise in R programming and developing analytical team capabilities.

Also involved in launching a start up market research business – Market Research New Zealand – specialising in business data collection.

Contracts include:

  • Bank of New Zealand – Senior Developer – February 2023 – Current

    At the BNZ, I implement an R-based credit risk modelling system developed by their parent company, the National Australian Bank. The work brought together data on the Bank’s customer base, together with measures of credit risk and projections of future economic growth and change. The handover process involved training the permanent staff in the R statistical language and documenting the methodology for future redevelopment.

  • Public Voice Limited – Full Stack Developer – December 2022 – February 2023

At Public Voice, I was a full stake developer for a specific piece of public consultation work. I created an end-to-end survey management solution using R and PHP/MySQL.

  • Ministry for Primary Industries – Senior Developer – April 2022 – November 2022

    Working with the Greenhouse Gas inventory team to migrate New Zealand’s Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Monitoring system into a modern computer environment, and extend its capability to support a range of new and potential policy scenarios. The migration introduced a spatial dimension to agricultural emission measurement, with the potential for interactions between agricultural pollution and the environment to be explored.

  • Sense Partners – Senior Economist – December 2019 – February 2022

Developed a loss-of-sun pricing model for costing recently introduced urban development reforms. The model – ICARUS – is described here. My work provided costings for a Cost Benefit Analysis paper written by PWC and Sense Partners.

    • Statistics New Zealand
      • Estimates for the Value of the New Zealand Digital Economy: SNZ wanted to estimate the value of the “Digital Economy”: technology-based goods/services/business processes. This paper was part technical, but also written for Senior Managers and the Minister of Statistics. I did both the analysis, the writing and presentations.
      • Publications to Cease: SNZ wanted to identify which published outputs it should cease, in order to publish others. Lack any data, this was an economic theory-based report, identifying how under-used outputs might be identified from information requests, and custom data requests. Audience was SNZ Senior Management.
    • Department of Conservation

      Estimated the impact of whitebait regulations on the value of the South Island West Coast whitebait fisheries. Technical and theory-based written content used for a Cost Benefit Analysis for Cabinet Paper.

Ministry of Health – Manager, COVID-19 Intelligence & Surveillance April 2020 – December 2020

Contracted to the COVID-19 Health System Response team to manage the Intelligence and Surveillance team, and develop its personnel capability. The role involved connecting disconnected datasets together to trace each COVID-19 patient’s health sector contacts and make inferences on the state of COVID-19 within the community. As the team’s capability developed, the role transformed into managing the daily COVID-19 reporting from a team of twelve data and research analysts.

Principal Analyst, Ministry for the Environment, Water Policy July 2019 – December 2019

I was contracted for six months to support the modelling requirements of the government’s Essential Freshwater regulations. The regulations focused on stopping the decline in river water quality, and reversing New Zealand’s declining water quality trend.

At MfE, I developed Whio, a spatially based catchment level water quality modelling system built around a pollution export coefficient model, but incorporating farm-based pollution mitigation scenarios. Whio enabled MfE to identify poor water quality river systems that could be returned to health, and river systems that regardless of any mitigation applied to land-based industrial activity within their catchment, cannot be improved. For the later rivers systems, land use change within their catchments is the only remaining alternative for improving river water quality.

Senior Economist, New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) Nov 2018 – Jun 2019

I was employed as a consulting economist to assist NZIER’s customers make better business and policy decisions. NZIER introduced a frankness to my writing and a high-level of technical economic rigour to my work. My best work was on Sister Cities. I also wrote about labour and housing policy

Manager, Energy and Building Trends, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment May 2016 – Nov 2018

This was a leadership role, where I managed a team of twelve Statisticians, Economists and Analysts that developed, produced and reported statistics and analysis on the building and the energy sectors. My focus was developing the team’s technical capability, skills and ability to adapt to the changing information needs of a new government. I moved their systems to the R language, and installed within the team a learning-based culture.

The team’s housing side was responsible for developing new statistical measures, reports and analysis for the Minister of Housing and Urban Development on the changing nature of New Zealand’s housing sector. The team’s energy side focused on modernising its technical systems, improving its workflow, and extending its modelling and communicating skills.

Principal Research Analyst, Sector Trends, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment May 2013 – May 2016

I came over from the Ministry of Health to MBIE to assist the Manager develop the technical capability of a new team. MBIE was seeking technical programming skills and economic analytical capability for a new team formed from the Ministries of Labour, Economic Development and Science and Innovation, and had picked up work from all three areas.

This role’s learnings were around how to make a high-performing team from people of different backgrounds, experience and technical capabilities. We focused on standardising our systems, implementing a learning culture across the team, and expecting innovation and development from our people. At the end, the Sector Trends team created highly technical work, communicated very simply to non-technical audiences.

Principal Policy Analyst (Economics), Strategic Policy, Ministry of Health Nov 2011 – May 2013

This role was about delivering a high level of economic modelling capability to a range of health-related economic topics, like DHB labour productivity, and long-term forecasts of health sector costs. This role taught me about delivering better quality work through working with non-technical, but skilled peers, to bring through economic frameworks, modelling and learnings into good applied policy advice.

Principal Technical Specialist – Forecasting and Modelling, Health Workforce New Zealand, Ministry of Health Oct 2009 – Nov 2011

I was employed into the Strategic Workforce Development Unit, later renamed Health Workforce New Zealand, to support workforce policy development through providing a quantitative analytical capability.

The role required forecasting New Zealand’s future health workforce skill requirements

Self-employed Contractor, Wiltshire Hogan Ltd / Infonalysis Ltd Mar 2003 – Oct 2009

Wiltshire Hogan Ltd was a consulting business providing economic and policy related services, research and advice. Infonalysis was an IT development company I made for my technical IT contracts. Major customers and outputs from both companies included:

  • Absolute Software: A Boston-based software company, specialising in fishing vessel monitoring systems. My role was to support the Boston-based software developers, and the Solomon Islands based customers as Business Analyst.
  • Waitemata District Health Board: estimating patient health service demand, and derived workforce and capital demand to support capital and workforce planning.
  • District Health Board New Zealand: developing a workforce data collection system and forecasts for key health sector occupations.
  • Bank of New Zealand: profiling customer loyalty data for a pre-approved credit card campaign targeted towards non-BNZ customers.
  • Telecom New Zealand: profiling internet product customer survival rates and modelling customer propensities to switch internet products.
  • Ministry of Health: estimating inter-district health board health service transfer pricing.
  • Statistics New Zealand: redeveloping Statistics New Zealand’s statistical programming systems.
  • Child, Youth and Family: SAS / Oracle database developer for the Te Pokoro database system.
Project Analyst, Ministry of Health 2001 – Mar 2003

This was a fun role: I was involved in implementing health IT system changes in primary care to support the government Primary Health Organisation policy objectives. Role required engaging with health service IT system developers and overseeing the implementation of sector-wide IT system changes.

Applied Research and Needs Analyst, Health Funding Authority 2000 – 2001

Population demographics modelling, and estimating health service demand and health service mix.

Economic Statistician, Statistics New Zealand 1996 – 2000

My first professional economic role. Employed in the National Accounts section and developing experimental GST-based economic measures.

Education

Master of Commerce (Economics) – First Class – University of Canterbury – Graduated January 2015

Thesis: Health Sector Labour Market Dynamics and Multi-Employer Collective Agreements
My thesis modelled how changes in the employment conditions for different workforces impacted the demand for other occupation employment numbers and wages. Health sector unions have monopoly power through restricted workforce entry to health sector occupations. Costs are passed on to a single wealthy employer (the Government).

Through a system of equations, occupational changes in wages or numbers employed were transmitted through into other workforces, according to fundamental economic relationships between occupation workforce groups, and how health services are produced.

My thesis can be accessed here: https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/9831

Bachelor of Commerce with Honours (Economics) – Economics – University of Otago – Graduated 1995

Dissertation: Growth Revisited – Re-estimating the Barro-Lee Growth Equations
When you remove the effects of more capital and more labour, inter-country economic growth differences were historically seen as ‘random’, based on technology and ‘exogeneous’ to economic theory. “New” economic growth theory explained inter-country growth differences as related to the quality and quantity of “human capital”, stability of country’s democratic processes and the level of economic “distortions” in the free markets.

My honours thesis replicated the key economic thinking of the day, and tested the economic validity of their results, some of which was found wanting.

Bachelor of Laws – University of Otago – Graduated 1994

Commercial Law Focus: Taxation, Company law, Commercial Transactions, Negotiation, Intellectual Property and Competition Law.

Admitted as a Barrister & Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand in 2008.

Peer-reviewed Academic Publications

Gillman, M., Hogan, J., “Extending Corporate Liability in New Zealand”, International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 26, 1999, pp487 – 500

Westbrooke, I., Baxter, J., Hogan, J., “Are Maori Under Served for Cardiac Interventions?”, The New Zealand Medical Journal, Vol. 114, 2001, pp 484-487