What is casework?

Our regulatory role

In accordance with the statutory requirements set out by the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, we work to promote, monitor and safeguard the production and publication of official statistics. OSR is responsible for managing the Authority casework function. We undertake monitoring to identify and investigate issues raised with both OSR and the Authority.

Our core aim is to uphold the principles of the Code of Practice for Statistics by adhering to the pillars of Trustworthiness, Quality and Value. We ensure that the use of official statistics and data meets the following standards: official statistics and data should adhere to the principles of intelligent transparency; statistics used in public statements should be accessible and verifiable; and they should not be used misleadingly or without supporting data or context.

Our intention with any intervention is to deliver positive change, whether that is an improvement in the production or communication of official statistics, or more responsible use of statistics in public debate. Our approach is always guided by our interventions policy.

Our remit

Official statistics are an essential public asset. For the public to have confidence in government statistics, it is not enough that they are produced well. If they are used poorly in public communications, there is a risk that public audiences become mistrustful and frustrated with the government and the statistical system.

We take a broad view of what counts as a “statistic”. We judge that it is unlikely that the public distinguishes statistics that are formally official statistics from those that are management information, economic models or some other type of government analysis. We recognise that the public is likely to expect that rigorous standards have been followed in how data are produced and used. We may therefore comment when numbers are used by government to support public communication regardless of whether these numbers come from published statistics, internal analysis, internal operational data or models. The same basic standards – the provision of context and sources, and access to an explanation of how the numbers are derived – apply. In short, the numbers should be verifiable, accessible and easy to understand.

Our process

There are two main routes to an issue becoming casework:

• Someone brings an issue to our attention, initiating our investigation process.
• We identify an issue (self-generated casework).

Regardless of how the casework is initiated, the process remains the same. During the investigation process, we take a decision on whether we agree there is a concern or not. We also identify whether the concern is within our remit or out of scope. We engage with the individual, organisation or data producer to which the concern relates. Some correspondence will be published on our website (or the Authority website when a letter is sent by the Chair of the Authority), and some will be private, and so will only be logged in our issues log. Our frequently asked questions page provides more details on our decision making process for casework.

There are some limits to what we will take on as a case to investigate:

• We do not form judgements on the merits of policy arguments. We simply aim to clarify what the underlying numbers say and mean.
• We do not seek to verify the facts underlying all key public statements. Instead, we look to clarify what the underlying statistics say, and ensure they are equally available to all.
• We will not comment on the use of statistics by the media – there are separate regulators of the press, broadcasting, advertising and political finance. We refer complainants to these regulators where relevant. However, where the media are quoting comments that use statistics, we may investigate and contact the person who was quoted if they are a statistics producer or member of government.

We update our quarterly management information on how many cases we have handled in each quarter and the average closure times (median and mean). Alongside this year’s casework report, we are also updating our more-detailed management information from 2019 to 2024.

If you have a concern that you believe falls under our remit, please do raise a concern here.