Data has played an important role in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, driving newfound recognition of its value in understanding society and shaping policy. One of the features of the pandemic is that it has taught us the value of things that may have been taken for granted: family, social contact, key workers who keep […]
UKSA Chair Sir David Norgrove has written to Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to reiterate concerns with the official data on testing and highlight the importance of good data as the Test and Trace programme is taken forward. Statistics published by government should shed light on key issues. They should […]
Today, 12 May 2020, marks 200 years since the birth of Florence Nightingale. At a time when the world is relying so heavily on nurses it has never been more appropriate to celebrate an individual who revolutionised the nursing profession by bringing about massive sanitation reform, and who showed great compassion caring for injured soldiers. […]
Working out the prevalence of Covid-19 in the population is one of the crucial components of understanding the pandemic and the timing of relaxation of lockdown measures. We’ve been looking at the way that targets for Covid-19 have been defined and measured. And we received a number of emails and comments from members of the […]
The pandemic has triggered its own oft-repeated tropes. Like ‘no-one has had enough of experts now’ or variants thereon (see this piece in the Irish Times). Or that while it’s good to be guided by the science, the “science” is not just a single monolithic block of knowledge (here’s an excellent piece by Dominic Abrams). […]
Stories of extraordinary human feats abound in this pandemic. They include the efforts of health and care professionals and personal commitments to support others in the community, perhaps best shown by Captain Tom Moore. Statisticians are not on the front line of dealing with the impacts of Covid-19. Yet it is clear that one of […]
Social care is in crisis across Great Britain. With responsibility for social care being a devolved matter, each country has its own system in place but all share common problems. Given the urgency of the crisis, which is exacerbated by the current Covid-19 pandemic, there is growing interest in what others are doing and what […]
People who provide services often need to know about local variations so that they can focus efforts in the right places. We are all witnessing this first hand at the moment in how the country is responding to COVID-19, for example, with a need for detailed geographical data to help NHS planning. The Race Disparity Unit (RDU) […]
The world of work has changed dramatically over the last decade. The employment rate in the UK has seen record highs in recent years, and the way that people work has become much more flexible, with a large increase in self-employment and part-time working. The UK employment and jobs statistics, produced by the Office for […]
Albert Einstein was reputed to have said that curiosity has its own reason for existing and the important thing is not to stop questioning. This blog is a case study example of the value of indulging curiosity to help strengthen the quality of valuable official statistics- and in this blog we look at ONS’s Employees […]