Recommendations

Based on the findings of this review, we have identified six recommendations that NISRA should address to enhance the statistics’ Trustworthiness, Quality and Value:

• To give users clarity on NISRA’s plans for transitioning to the new survey, NISRA should publish a project roadmap and user engagement strategy setting out key milestones and updates

• To give users clarity on how the survey might meet their needs, NISRA should make it clearer for users to see which questions from the LFS will not be included in the LMS and offer possible solutions where data gaps may arise.

• To ensure all users understand how their views are acted upon, NISRA should publish information on how it is collating user views and using them to inform decision making. Where user feedback is not being acted on, this decision should be explained to users.

• To ensure users can understand the impact of the survey design changes on the estimates, NISRA should publish its discontinuity analysis, which reconciles the differences between the LFS and the LMS, methodology and quality assurance information once it is finalised.

• Once they are developed, we recommend that NISRA publish the criteria that it is using to assess the quality of the LMS and its readiness to transition as soon as possible. This should include information on how the LMS is performing against these criteria.

• For transparency, NISRA should publish information about the solutions it has worked out with ONS for producing the UK-level estimates.