We are pleased to announce this year’s winner of the Trustworthiness, Quality & Value Award. The award is given in partnership with the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) and our media partner, Civil Service World.
The award recognises excellence in the voluntary application of the ‘pillars’ of trustworthiness, quality and value (TQV) that stand at the heart of OSR’s Code of Practice for Statistics. It celebrates those organisations both inside and outside of government that go above and beyond in voluntarily applying the pillars to their work.
Winner: Fable Data – ‘Data for Good’ programme
Fable Data was founded with a vision to provide a pro bono granular datasets for government bodies, academics and national statistical offices, to be available for innovative research and policymaking for the creation of new economic indicators. Its ‘Data for Good’ programme has encouraged new opportunities for combining and extrapolating economic insights for key institutions. These included HM Treasury, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and the Deutsche Bundesbank, which saw the value in Fable’s datasets and used them in combination with official statistics and other sources to provide a deeper insight into economic activity.
Through supporting these organisations across a wide range of policy areas, Fable Data could answer economic questions with their granular insights at real time speed. Their European consumer transaction data helped the understanding of the underlying drivers for changes in spending trends. During the pandemic and beyond this has, in partnership with the University of Nottingham, they have helped explore aspects of regional recovery, demonstrating the impact of local lockdowns, economic tracking with geographical granularity and challenged the framing of conventional regional economic policy. The ‘Data for Good’ programme continues to contribute to further innovation, including literature on key macroeconomics topics as seen via IMF working papers on inflation weights and the impact of monetary policy on consumption.
Read OSR’s case study on the winning work
Baroness Onora O’Neill of Bengarve, whose ‘trustworthiness’ work inspired this award, said: ‘I am delighted to see Fable Data win the award this year, using the principles to support their regional transactions innovation across the data landscape, creating important partnerships and ultimately serving the public good.’
Ed Humpherson, director general for regulation at OSR, said: ‘Fable Data is a brilliant winner that continues to use their ‘Data for Good’ programme to provide key granular datasets on a pro bono basis to government bodies, academics and national statistical producers, helping to facilitate effective policymaking, enable innovative research, and explore the next generation of economic indicators.’