Executive Summary Introduction to the review Official statistics produced by governments should uphold the highest standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in order to serve the public good. In 2017 we championed the Reproducible Analytical Pipeline (RAP), a new way of producing official statistics developed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the […]
Learning lessons from the approach to developing models for awarding grades in the UK in 2020 Executive Summary Purpose of this report In March 2020 the ministers with responsibility for education in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland announced the closure of schools as part of the UK’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. Further government […]
Executive Summary This report sets out the findings from our review of statistical leadership. It looks at how statistical leadership can be strengthened across government. Strong statistical leadership is essential to ensuring statistics serve the public good. Many decisions draw on statistics published by governments across the UK. Successful implementation of government policies can be […]
To succeed in our aim to develop a better understanding of statistics serving the public good, it is critical to understand what is already known, and what is not known, about this subject. This review contributes towards that aim. We begin by considering how the public good is defined. This phrase is sometimes used interchangeably […]
Attitudes towards mental health have changed in recent years. Mental health, which was often stigmatised and not discussed openly, is receiving increasing public, media and government attention as an important public health issue. There is a greater awareness that mental health is something we all have and, just like physical health, it can sometimes be good and […]
Statistics for the public good This strategic plan was developed during the coronavirus pandemic. The experience of the pandemic has influenced our business plan in two ways. Firstly, it has shown more clearly than ever the importance to the public of trustworthy, high quality, high value information. It’s not enough for good information to be […]
Office for Statistics Regulation’s Annual Report 2019-2020
We have been looking in detail at the value of the current data and statistics on post-16 education and skills. As an independent UK wide regulator, we are in a unique position to take a broader look at issues of importance to society and to make the case for improved statistics, across organisational and Government boundaries. This report, our second report in this […]
We have published our new state of the UK’s statistical system report for 2020/21 This review sets out our view on the current state of government statistics. At their best, statistics and data produced by government are insightful, coherent, and timely. They are of high policy-relevance and public interest. There are good examples of […]
During the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic there has been increasing focus on, and interest in, the reproduction number – R. R is the average number of secondary infections produced by 1 infected person. OSR’s observation of recent presentations of R is that generally a good job is being made of explaining both the number itself and […]