Abstract
Coping with the Covid-19 pandemic needs timely, relevant and reliable statistics. At the same time, there are many calls to reset how we live our lives, to build back better, and to adopt a new growth narrative. These also put statistics in the spotlight, in this case a long-running desire to go beyond GDP to wider measures of sustainable wellbeing. The vision that official statistics should be indispensable in democratic society is clear. But how to deliver on that – and get official statistics widely used - in an increasingly complex data ecosystem? The goal is for statistics to be used widely and not just within government. We argue that the official statistics system will be more effective if it embraces more than just government-funded producers of statistics in order to generate quality, public statistics. Our recommendations include that national statistics offices should engage more with the public, businesses, and civil society.

Paul Allin is a visiting professor of statistics at Imperial College London. His research interests are the measurement of national wellbeing and progress, and the use of these measures in politics, policy, business and everyday life. He chairs the Statistics User Forum. Paul spent forty years as a professional statistician, researcher and policy analyst in the Office for National Statistics and other UK government departments and agencies.

Phil Crook - philcrook2011@gmail.com
RSS International Development Section