Findings from OSR's Call for Evidence

In autumn 2023, OSR invited stakeholders to share their thinking about the Code of Practice for Statistics (the Code) and how it may need to evolve to meet challenges and opportunities in the data and statistics landscape. OSR initiated a series of engagement events to stimulate discussion and ideas, and ran a written call for evidence between 13 September and 11 December 2023.

The call for evidence posed questions to stakeholders on three areas:

1. the Code itself – on how well it supports official statistics to serve the public good;
2. new proposed badges for accredited official statistics, official statistics and official statistics in development; and
3. ideas for enhancing and growing the voluntary application scheme

The full details of the call for evidence can be found here.

We received 51 responses to the call for evidence – from 24 individuals and 27 organisations, of which 14 were official statistics producers.

This report presents an overview of the findings from the call for evidence and sets out how we indeed to act on this feedback.

We are grateful to everyone who participated in the events and to all individuals and organisations that contributed their views in the call for evidence. It has been a valuable process and is shaping our understanding of how to best refresh the content of the Code, as well as how we can best communicate and present the Code and its standards.