The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has published four priorities that build upon the work undertaken by OSR over the past year, and continue to support the vision of statistics that serve the public good.
These business priorities will focus on four key areas: supporting and challenging producers to innovate, collaborate and build resilience; championing the effective communication of statistics to support society’s key information needs; continuing to widen our reach beyond official statistics and official statistics producers; and increase our capability as a regulator.
The four priorities are:
- Support and challenge producers to innovate, collaborate and build resilience
We will champion and support statistics producers to build on the innovation, collaboration and resilience they have displayed during the last few years. Our regulatory activities will see us promoting the sharing, linking and reuse of data. We will support statistics producers to maximise the value of their data and statistics through increased innovation and more collaboration. We will also focus on activities which will support statistics producers to develop and build resilience.
- Champion the effective communication of statistics to support society’s key information needs
We will continue to champion the transparent release and use of data and statistics and argue for accurate and timely statistics to be available on the topics that matter most. Our regulatory activities will see us focus on how statistics producers communicate uncertainty, and how they mitigate and manage misuse of statistics and data. We will also focus our work on activities which support statistics producers to engage with, understand and meet the varying needs of a wide range of users of data and statistics.
- Continue to widen our reach beyond official statistics and official statistics producers
We will continue our wider reach work outside of official statistics. Our focus next year will be on working with organisations, and with teams within government departments, who are not official statistics producers, but who produce and communicate data and analysis that are used in the public domain. These types of data and analysis are often likely to be perceived and used by others as if they are official statistics. We will continue our engagement with data influencers and data users to support us with this focus.
- Increase our capability as a regulator
We will continue the work we have started this year, focussing on activities which make our opinions and judgements more transparent and easier to find, and on organisational activities which will strengthen our people’s skills.
These priorities will be developed over the coming months, and will input into OSR’s annual business plan which will be published in April. The business plan will set out in more detail what OSR wants to achieve next financial year, and how these plans will contribute to delivering OSR’s broader Strategic Plan, 2020 to 2025 and its ultimate vision, that statistics should serve the public good.
As we work towards our final business plan, we welcome your input – whether you’re a user or producer of statistics, or just care about statistics and data – we’d love to hear your views. Please get in contact with us at regulation@statistics.gov.uk to let us know your thoughts and questions about these priorities, or to let us know if you would like a wider discussion with us.