hich – but not all – is stored in a local case management system (CMS) and interrogated using a range of reporting tools. Local reporting must provide service leaders with clear information about how their services are operating. Data can’t tell the whole story; your data work should help inform, challenge, and enhance leaders’ direct experience. There is also a significant element of national reporting. LAs provide data to DfE annually in several statutory data collection, most notably the CIN Census and the SSDA903 (CLA) return, as well as participating in quarterly benchmarking exercises regionally and nationally. Some local analysts will spend most of their time between April and July focused on producing, validating, and submitting their LA’s annual returns to DfE. They will then review the national outturns later in the year alongside their local insight. The data function must accommodate short local cycles of work with annual national cycles, alongside ad hoc analysis and information requests from service leaders to inform local improvement and performance work (and from external individuals in the form of Freedom of Information requests). The last noteworthy element of the work is preparing for, and responding to, inspections by Ofsted, the sector regulator. LAs will prepare in different ways, including data quality work and careful performance analysis. 10 What makes CSC data different? We tend to identify CSC data work as differing from “typical” data work expectations, and understanding these differences will help you make good analytical choices. In particular, the below three factors are important to understand: Small numbers An average-sized LA might be working with 2,000 children across its CSC system at any one time. The cohort attracting most attention