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What does public data mean to you?

Public data sets and statistics on a wide range of topics are available, from Government Departments, local authorities, NHS and other public bodies.

Large producers include the Office for National Statistics, covering England and Wales, the Welsh Government, the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Organisation. A starting point for investigating what can be a very complex area would be the list of National Statistics maintained by the Office for Statistics Regulation although this includes only statistics whose quality has been assessed and found to meet OSR standards, so is by no means complete.
 

Topics include economic statistics such as trade and GDP, social statistics such as health, population, crime. Some figures are based on the decennial population census, some on population surveys (e.g. Health Survey for England), some arise from data collected as part of administrative processing (e.g figures on the care of patients admitted to the NHS).

A wide range of high level and sometimes more detailed tables are freely available on public websites. Detailed data sets may be freely available for download, or may be available on request, sometimes subject to data protection restrictions or requirements or to processing charges, depending on what is requested.

International Statistics​
A good place to start is the United Nations site https://data.un.org which provides a wide range of basic statistics by country. Note that international comparisons can be challenging due to the different ways countries collect data - footnotes need to be read with care

Benefits

  • Often a good place to start
  • Often freely available, particularly higher level (e.g. large geographical areas, broad categories) figures
  • Coverage and level of detail can be good
  • Definitions and descriptive documents are usually available

Challenges 

  • Can be difficult to find
  • Definitions and descriptions can be difficult to find and interpret
  • Despite some recent improvements can still be very complex and not user-friendly
  • Requirements for detailed level data can run into data protection issues
  • For data arising from administrative sources there can be definitional peculiarities and non-random missing data, particularly at detailed level, due to the peculiarities of the underlying processes.