Guest blog by John Aston, RSS President
There is a lot to celebrate in UK statistics.
One of the pleasures of being RSS president is to open and attend our annual conference, and this year that took me to Edinburgh for four days of meeting members and listening to fascinating presentations. It was the Society’s biggest ever conference – with over 950 people attending – and a fantastic showcase for the strength and breadth of impact of the field.
Attendees had the opportunity to hear from leaders of the field, with keynote presentations from Heather Battey on models and their parameterisation and Christyl Donnely on policy engagement with government. RSS award-winner Claire Miller reminded us of the critical role statisticians are playing to build a more sustainable world.
We were also delighted, amused and inspired to better communicate data by the stunning visualisations of David McCandless. Baroness Alex Freeman generously shared her journey from animal behaviour PhD and documentary-making to the House of Lords via evidence communication – and equipped us all to use the system to inform and enable better decisions.
The conference is also about celebrating our strong pipeline of talent, and there were presentations and posters from early career statisticians many of whom will doubtless be on the main stage at future events.
The conference was held against a backdrop of deep and continued scrutiny of the official statistics system in the UK, and so it was only appropriate to conclude with a panel session that brought in the perspectives of chief statisticians from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as an international perspective from the Executive Director of the American Statistical Association. In addition to distinct local challenges, commonalities surfaced around the need to better integrate administrative data and bring in wider sources to complement existing processes. The pace of work achieved during Covid-19 was impressive but has led to pressure for other outputs to be maintained at a similar pace. In addition to the technical and resourcing challenges, the discussion focused on growing issues around public trust, data literacy and misinformation – and the resulting need to restore trust and confidence in official statistics.
The key question is how this can be achieved, and here the common theme was around transparency. Building trust requires demonstrating trustworthiness, and transparency is a key way to do this. This means that when there are methodological challenges that will affect the quality of statistics, the public is informed about them and what steps are being taken to address them. The recent publication of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) economic statistics recovery plan is a good example of that and gives us a framework we can use to understand progress.
There are significant challenges ahead in the transformation required at ONS – but the final theme from the closing conference panel was a sense of optimism based on the collective expertise of all statisticians and data professionals working in the official statistics system and a confidence that they will deliver.
Aside from the simple enjoyment and fun i experienced being around 950 people all excited about statistics, as I reflect on the conference, it is with a real sense of inspiration at the quality of work of my colleagues in statistics and data science – it has underlined the vital role of statistics and data in informing decisions and helping tackle society’s most pressing challenges.