Jonathan Everett, RSS Head of Policy
This is the first in a new series of quarterly blogs to update you on our policy and advocacy work, which we’re increasingly approaching through engagement with government and partner organisations. We’re introducing this quarterly series to keep members updated on the work you may not have heard about that furthers our campaign priorities – currently, AI, public statistics (our approach to engagement with the UK’s statistical system) and public understanding of statistics and data.
Public statistics
Having partnered on delivering the first UK Statistics Assembly in January, our continued work with the UK Statistics Authority has further cemented our commitment to nurturing a sustainable, high-quality statistical system for the future. Since the Assembly, staff have regularly met with officials within the UK’s statistical system, and we are planning a series of roundtables with the UK Statistics Authority to enable RSS members to feed into discussions about the technical issues at the heart of the challenges faced by statistics producers. We are also engaging with the Authority on the development of their new strategy – emphasising the importance of user engagement and the public statistics approach.
We have continued to argue for the Household Costs Indices (HCIs) to be progressed to the status of an accredited official statistic – so that they are more likely to be used to inform decision-making. We have fed into the UK Statistics Authority’s strategy refresh the need for HCIs to have accredited status well before RPI changes into CPIH in 2030, so users have access to a household index. We are also attending a UN panel of experts meeting to promote HCIs internationally.
We have been continuing to promote and further our Statistics Under Pressure (SUP) project, which seeks to support statisticians making data-based decisions in pressurised situations. We met with the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) secretariat to talk about how SUP might be of use to SAGE experts and met with colleagues from the Institute for Government to discuss any synergies with their work. We also presented to the Government Statistical Service Quality Champions Network and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero on our work.
Promoting statistical literacy and public understanding
A key part of our work to promote public understanding is to ensure that statistics and data are taught well at school. We responded to the House of Commons Education Committee’s inquiry into Further Education and Skills, calling for greater emphasis on statistical competence in the skills pipeline, and submitted evidence to a forthcoming Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology briefing about the STEM skills pipeline.
We met with different organisations conducting reviews of the education system (OCR and Maths Horizons) to feed in our views to their work. We also have been discussing with the Geographical Association and Royal Meteorological Society how statistics are embedded within geography qualifications.
On the topic of climate change, our Climate Change and Net Zero Task Force recently published a guide to official statistics on climate change, exploring where to find statistics and where there are data gaps.
We are also pursuing this priority by aiming to improve the use of statistics within key professions. Our focus, given the recent attention on the Lucy Letby case, has been on the use of statistics in the legal system. With the expertise of our Statistics and the Law Section, we have been engaging with organisations across the legal system – including the Ministry of Justice, the Crown Prosecution Service and National Police Chiefs’ Council – to highlight our broad concern with statistics in the law, as set out in the Section's 2022 report and to understand where input from the RSS would be most helpful. Our call for more collaboration with statisticians has been warmly received in these discussions and we are now exploring a range of potential initiatives that will lead to improvements for the system.
AI
We recently published an update on the work of our AI Task Force and an interview with the chair.
We are continuing to work on building relationships with officials at the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology as well as regulators and are looking at bringing together practitioners for a discussion on evaluation methodologies.
Other work
We have been engaging with the Covid Inquiry to ensure that statistical lessons from the pandemic are learned. In the past month, we submitted a final witness statement for module seven, focusing on test, trace and isolate, and we submitted a draft statement to module nine, which looks at the economic response to the pandemic.
And finally, we published our research, commissioned by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, looking into their portfolio of research grants. The analysis, in collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute, explores potential barriers certain groups face in obtaining funding. Further details on the findings can be found in this blog from Eugenie Hunsicker, chair of the project steering group and RSS fellow.