Regulation blog

Ed Humpherson, the Director General for Regulation, team members at the Office for Statistics Regulation and other ad-hoc guest authors present think pieces on how the different areas of the statistical system can affect and benefit the public.

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  • Understanding rough sleeping during a pandemic

    23 October 2020

    Only with a fuller picture, drawing on a range of robust sources of statistics and further evidence, will government statistics be able to fully represent the lived experiences of homeless…

  • Statistics shining a light

    19 October 2020

    To help us celebrate World Statistics Day on Tuesday 20 October, John Pullinger, President of the International Association for Official Statistics, has written this guest blog. The last few months…

  • Now, about that Excel spreadsheet…

    15 October 2020

    Many statisticians and analysts are now starting to think differently and move away from off-the-shelf software. Within the Government Statistical Service this approach is known as a Reproducible Analytical Pipeline.

  • The exams algorithm story is about more than just exams

    13 October 2020

    We’ve launched a review of the way the statistical models were built and overseen. It is not our intention to apportion blame or to launch criticisms with the benefit of…

  • Why Official Statistics producers are vital to administrative data research

    8 October 2020

    Today, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) published their report on ‘Unlocking the value of data through onward sharing’. As Director of a partnership that exists to do just that,…

  • A healthy improvement: helping users find the stats they need on health

    2 October 2020

    This month the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published a new tool, aiming to bring together health statistics from across government in one place. We welcome this tool to improve…

  • Looking back to look forward

    28 September 2020

    The Office of Statistics Regulation (OSR) can designate statistics as ‘National Statistics’, but what does this actually mean? We need to look back to understand the future of statistic designations.

  • Compliant toddlers and minor train delays

    23 September 2020

    Language is tricky. And especially adjectives. We need to be careful that in bringing statistics to life, we don’t choose words that could mislead or imply there’s something in the…

  • How can official statistics better serve the public good?

    15 September 2020

    In a recent seminar we asked members of the Government Statistical Service for three words they would use to describe Government Statistics. Among the top words we got back were…

  • Breaking boundaries – giving non-official data a stamp of approval 

    11 September 2020

    We introduced a scheme in 2018 alongside the publication of the Code of Practice that we call ‘voluntary application’. It is where an organisation releasing non-official data elects to hold themselves to the three pillars of the…

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