Paul Allin: Honorary Officer for Public Statistics
Hard on the heels of the Lievesley review of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) and the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR)
review of Office for National Statistics (ONS) economic statistics, come two further exercises to scrutinise the official statistics system and its outputs. What is going on and what is the RSS’s role in response?
First up, the Cabinet Office and UKSA launched
a short review last month into the ONS and its performance and culture. We were given the opportunity to engage with the review and to meet with its lead, Sir Robert
Devereux. Our discussion focused on the current challenges facing the ONS, including the delivery of its core statistics and programmes, its organisational culture and leadership, and the effectiveness of its relationships with the Cabinet Office and the Treasury.
We’ve also prepared a response to Parliament’s Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s
inquiry into the work of UKSA, which is also examining the performance of ONS.
All these reviews, in various ways, reflect
criticisms - including about the reliability of ONS’s economic figures and uncertainties over the future of the census in England and Wales. The
Economist summarised this starkly with “The British state is blind”, pointing to the unreliability, and even absence, of data on the labour force and broader issues with population statistics.
It’s important to recognise that the ONS has faced some genuinely difficult statistical challenges over recent years – such as declining survey response rates – and that these are not unique to the UK’s statistical system but are being faced by statistical agencies across the globe. The demand for official statistics is rising but resourcing does not always follow. With the recent resignation of Sir Ian Diamond as National Statistician, this is certainly a time for reflection on the direction of the ONS.
The tone of our response to the reviews continues our long-standing position as a critical friend of the system: recognising the value of official statistics not only to government at all levels but also to businesses, civil society, and citizens (see our work on
public statistics). Also, many of our members are government statisticians or data analysts, for whom we serve as their professional body and advocate, ensuring they have the right support and tools for their complex work.
We believe our current engagement with all bodies that form part of the UK’s statistical system is genuine and valuable to both us and them. Our partnership with UKSA on January’s UK Statistics Assembly, for example was a collaboration embedded throughout the planning process. We also welcome ONS’s commitment to publishing their strategies for their surveys and economic statistics, which I hope will address some of the problems we have seen over recent months and we are pleased to have partnered with the Government Statistical Service (GSS) on an
initiative on the future of the statistics profession.
That said, user engagement more generally remains a key focus for our
Public Statistics Advisory Group, and it’s something where there is room for improvement at the ONS and across the GSS. Better communication around its decision-making and the trade-offs required would help boost user confidence and we would like to see more of a focus on proactive rather than reactive dialogue with users. We will be publishing fuller suggestions on this shortly.
The RSS has a unique role to play in helping tackle the challenges: we are committed to supporting our members working within the UK’s statistical system; and as an independent body and charity we seek opportunities to promote our vision for data at the heart of decision-making. To this end, we have been planning a series of roundtables with UKSA, including relevant ONS, OSR and GSS topic leads, focused on some of the technical issues at the heart of the challenges faced by statistics producers. For example, tackling declining response rates and how utilising more administrative data can enhance the quality, relevance, and use of official statistics.
ONS and the GSS produce an ever-growing number of outputs, but there is a need to prioritise and involve users in that prioritisation and we as a Society have a key role to play in that discussion.
If you have any comments or suggestions on our work in this area please do email our
policy team.