It has been a busy few months across our campaign priorities – we finalised our research on policy data gaps, continued constructive engagement with the statistical system, promoted our work on AI and published a range of climate change explainers.
Public Statistics
In April we published the final recommendations emerging from our poverty data gaps research along with a series of case studies highlighting the impact of issues with poverty-related datasets and data access. This was the culmination of a year-long research project conducted with the support of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Insight Infrastructure programme and in partnership with the Centre for Public Data. The work has produced detailed insight into barriers that hold back the potential of poverty data to support research and programme delivery, and our detailed recommendations set out what the government and the statistical system can do to unlock this potential.
We are looking forward now to engaging with the statistical system, parliamentarians and wider civil society to make the case for these proposals. We have started this process by highlighting our recommendations as part of our engagement with the joint inquiry by the Education and Work and Pensions Select Committees on the government’s Child Poverty Strategy. We will soon be starting related work on ethnicity data gaps in Northern Ireland – more details about that will be available soon.
We have also continued our engagement with the UK statistical system – publishing a write-up of our roundtable on population statistics and meeting with producers to discuss how our recommendations are being taken forward. Our honorary officer for public statistics – David Caplan – has reflected on the impact of this work. We are planning another roundtable (looking at coherence) for the 16 July. There is still time for members to join that – if you would like to take part please register your interest by noon on 13 July.
Much of this work is to further our aim of ensuring that evidence is properly treated in policy making. In that regard we, together with Sense About Science, wrote to the Prime Minister expressing our concerns that the Regulatory Policy Committee (which plays a role in assessing the evidence used in decisions) might be abolished without any consultation or transparency. Our call for a proper discussion of the best way to assess evidence used to inform policy was picked up by the Telegraph, and we are waiting to see how the matter develops.
We also responded to a government consultation on digital IDs. When we initially submitted evidence to the Covid Inquiry, we made the case for the government to consult on unique personal identifiers that might help improve data linkage. While we’re interested in the potential of digital IDs to enable that, we made the point in our consultation response that the government needs to communicate in a way that will build trust if this is to be effective.
AI
The focus in our AI work has been on promoting our recent paper (AI is Statistics). We had identified a concern that statistics was not naturally associated with AI among decision makers or the public, and we are making a concerted effort to change that. Members of our AI Task Force were invited to discuss the work at a GSS Quality Champions Network meeting, which was a great opportunity to discuss the implications of this work with government statisticians. We were also pleased to hear the paper referenced in the first annual UKSA chair’s speech on the state of the UK's statistical system at the start of July. There is more to do, though – and we are now focusing our efforts on landing the report at the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, where most of the AI policymaking sits.
We have also been preparing a new report looking at the regulation of AI, which will be published soon.
Public understanding and education
We’ve announced three new William Guy Lecturers for the 2026-27 academic year. We had a strong set of applications providing a range of talks to help school students understand how they can use statistics to help spot misinformation. This year – given the nature of the topic – we decided to target the talks at students at secondary school and in post-16 education, as younger children (hopefully!) have less exposure to online misinformation.
The RSS’s Climate Change Task Force has continued to produce a range of valuable explainers setting out how statistics underpins our understanding of how the climate is changing. In May, we looked at when and how climate data should be adjusted over time, and in June we focused on the role of AI in weather forecasting. Over the past year, we have built a strong bank of explainers, and – especially as minds are focused on this topic in the context of summer heatwaves – we’ll be focused on effectively explaining how statistics can help people understand our changing climate.
We have responded to a number of consultations and parliamentary inquiries over the past few months. Most recently we submitted evidence to the Numeracy for Life inquiry, calling for a series of measures to better equip people with the skills needed in a data-driven world. We’ve also responded to two Department for Education consultations on a new Level 1 Maths qualification and Level 2 & Level 3 qualifications in Digital Systems and Data. For the new level 1 qualification, we’ve expressed support for the proposal insofar as it might help end the cycle of GCSE resits faced by some pupils – but we stressed the importance of ensuring young people develop the skills to understand and work with data effectively, equipping them to succeed in further education, employment or simply everyday life in a data-driven world. For the other qualifications, we argued that the proposed subject content is far too heavily weighted towards digital systems, with insufficient emphasis on data skills. We’re planning to use this work to start conversations with Ofqual and exam boards.
Finally – we are keeping a close eye on the situation in UK higher education funding. We wrote to the University of Nottingham to stress the importance of their statistics work in the context of cost-reduction measures that the university is taking. We hope to have a discussion with university leadership in the coming weeks.