Annex A – Casework Summary April 2021 to March 2022

Management information

• Percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole per cent.
• When calculating response times, cases that were closed on the same day they came in, have a 1-day response time, rather than 0.
  • Not all cases have a replied on date (for example internally generated casework may not result in a physical output). In these cases we have included the cleared date. This is the date that the recommendations for how to take the casework forward has been signed off by the DG.
• Internally generated cases are issues that have been noticed by internal staff. The OSR team monitor the use of statistics in public debate including social media.
• The categories in this report are provided to give an indication of the areas and issues covered by casework. There may be cases which could be classified as multiple categories, in these cases a decision has been made on which category is most relevant. In each case only one has been selected. As part of a range of process improvements OSR is looking to develop the categories and make improvements to the management information associated with Casework.
• Definitions of themes
  • Use/Misuse of statistics: there are concerns that statistics have been used inappropriately or incorrectly in public debate (whether deliberately or not)
  • Presentation: there are concerns with how the data, statistics or the supplementary guidance has been presented (including issues with accessibility).
  • Availability of statistics: there are concerns with a statement made in public debate that can not be replicated as the underlying statistics are not publicly available, there are identified gaps in data available that there is public interest in or data that was expected to be made available but isn’t published as expected.
  • Quality, reliability, trustworthiness (including assessment): Concerns that data doesn’t meet the requirements of the Code of Practice for Statistics. May result in regulatory work such as compliance checks.
  • Coherence and consistency: concerns with how statistics will be interpreted across users and the public or concerns with coherency and consistency in the way statistics have been produced. This can include changes in methodology which means you can no longer compare statistics over time.
  • Beyond the scope of official statistics: Concerns do not related to official statistics, however we may still look into these concerns if we think we can positively influence the outcome.
  • Legal (including non-compliance and disclosure): Cases under this category are in relation to legislation (statistical or otherwise) or where it is considered there may have been a breach of the law. For example this could include concerns with data protection.
  • Pre release: concerns that official statistics have been released, either in part or in full, ahead of the pre      announced publication date and time in a way that does not support equality of access.
  • Reduction in coverage or quality (cuts): concerns that data quality or availability is reduced and as a result is      no longer meeting the needs of its users.
• The time taken to complete casework can have a large level of skew and so, where possible, both the median and the arithmetic mean have been calculated. In order to offset the effects of this skewness the median is the headline measure used in discussion.
• You can see all cases considered during 2021/22 in the 2021/22 issues log. This includes information on the date the case was opened, date closed, description and outcome for all 241 cases considered in 2021/22. Issues logs are linked via the casework page on our website.
• Our domains have changed since the creation of the database that we use to log our casework. Cases have been assigned to the old domains based on the topic that they most align to and to make this easy to compare against for previous years, however work will be ongoing in 2022/23 to align the database with the new domains and their topic areas.

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