Our performance
Support and challenge producers to innovate, collaborate and build resilience
The change we want to see
We will champion and support statistics producers to build on the innovation, collaboration and resilience they have displayed during the last few years. Our regulatory activities will see us promoting the sharing, linking and reuse of data. We will support statistics producers in maximising the value of their data and statistics through increased innovation and collaboration. We will also focus on activities which will support statistics producers in developing and building resilience.
2023/24 highlights
At the beginning of 2023/24, we said that we wanted to be more consistent in balancing our responsiveness with applying strategic foresight and investing in deep dives – with a particular focus on the scrutiny of economic statistics and issues of quality.
Throughout 2023, we continued to respond to a high public interest in statistics. OSR’s work covered a huge range of issues, such as confirming the National Statistics Designation of Scotland’s Census, Data Linkage, looking into statistics relating to the Welsh Government 20 mph speed limit and confirming the National Statistics Accreditation of Statutory Homelessness in England. At the same time, we have shifted our priorities away from delivering high volumes of compliance checks towards more strategic programmes of work. For example, we started to deliver a new series of assessments that focus on the quality of economic statistics.
We have also established programmes to oversee the Office for National Statistics (ONS) as it seeks to transform key statistical outputs including the Labour Force Survey and International Migration.
In our State of the Statistical System Report, published in 2023, we reported that the UK’s statistical system continues to perform strongly, responding flexibly to different social and economic issues. But we also noted that the system was experiencing increasing resource challenges. We committed to actions which will support statistics producers in developing and building resilience, for example, a blog series with practical advice on balancing scarce resources across a portfolio of statistics.
To ensure that the Code of Practice for Statistics remains relevant and able to effectively support producers as they and the external environment evolve, we conducted a review of the Code. We publicly invited feedback on all aspects of the Code, alongside a programme of external events and stakeholder engagement, to gather evidence on how the Code can be further strengthened.
Illustrations of how we are delivering impact
Economic Statistics:
Following the end of the UK’s membership of the European Statistical System, we have developed our approach to provide continued assurance that the UK statistical system produces high-quality, internationally comparable economic statistics. Our Spotlight on Quality programme has significantly enhanced our ability to assure confidence in the quality of economic statistics.
In July we published our first pilot review on Producer Price Inflation using a newly developed assessment framework that focuses more intensively on the quality of economic statistics. We identified eight actions that are needed to improve the quality of PPIs, seeing the issues with the samples of the three statutory surveys used to collect most price data as the biggest threat to the quality of the statistics. ONS published its action plan detailing how it intends to address our requirements in October.
In November we published our findings on revisions of estimates of UK GDP. We found that ONS’s approach to revisions is appropriate and well managed, concluding that the more extreme criticism that ONS received was misplaced. We highlighted requirements to improve public understanding of the uncertainty surrounding GDP estimates and outlined a need for faster access to data sources when producing these estimates.
In January we published our second pilot quality-focused assessment on profitability of UK companies and gross operating surplus of private non-financial corporations statistics. Our report sets five requirements needed to improve the quality of these statistics. Most importantly, ONS needs to demonstrate a better understanding of whether the data sources used to compile the estimates are of sufficient quality. Additionally, ONS needs to better communicate to users its understanding of the methods and data sources used, along with any limitations and uncertainties in the statistics. ONS published its response in January, and we expect it to make significant progress on some of these requirements by late summer.
Our third and fourth quality-focused assessments, which centre on Business Investment statistics and Business Enterprise Research and Development statistics, are ongoing.
Population Statistics:
We have been working on our assessment of ONS’s admin-based population estimates (ABPE). Population estimates have previously been dependent on information collected in the census. To reflect changes in society and technology, ONS has developed ABPE for England and Wales using the Dynamic Population Model (DPM). Our phased assessment will aim to provide reassurance to users on the new approach and will focus on:
- the suitability and quality assurance of the data and methods used in the DPM
- the extent to which ONS is benchmarking the state of readiness of population estimates to replace the cohort component method previously used
- an investigation into user understanding of and confidence in the new method
It is important to note the context for the work that is being undertaken by ONS. The work around producing and developing the DPM is complex, challenging and unique for UK official statistics. It is being undertaken by teams who are working incredibly hard and under considerable pressure. In addition to handling the complexity of this work, ONS also faces a challenge in terms of its financial position. There is ongoing uncertainty regarding the funding for the population transformation work, which adds to the challenging environment that staff members are operating in and presents a risk to the future delivery of the work.
In September we confirmed the Official Statistics accreditation of Scotland’s Census. In coming to our decision, we reviewed the evidence, including the progress made against requirements outlined in the 2019 phase-one assessment report and the 2023 phase-two assessment report, as well as our general expectations for meeting the standards of the Code. National Records of Scotland (NRS) faced unexpected challenges given that the overall response rate for Scotland’s Census 2022 was lower than had been hoped for. This in itself is not a barrier to accreditation, what is most important is the good quality of the output estimate, and it was clear that NRS had undertaken an extensive programme of work to achieve this. We were impressed with the steps taken to ensure that the best-quality estimates were produced and to provide assurance for users. With the assistance of an expert International Steering Group, NRS took a rigorous and methodical approach to the challenges that arose and proactively communicated quality information in order to help users understand, interpret and use these important statistics.
Work also continues on other aspects of population statistics, such as planning for phase three of the assessment of Census 2021, and monitoring progress on other activities, such as ONS’s consultation on the future of population and migration statistics and population statistics transformation plans in the devolved administrations. To support this work, OSR’s transforming population statistics programme board continues to regularly meet to enable us to share information across the organisation, coordinate activities and identify cross-cutting issues to explore further.
Champion the effective communication of statistics to support society’s key information needs
The change we want to see
We will continue to champion the transparent release and use of data and statistics and advocate for the availability of accurate and timely statistics on the topics that matter most. Our regulatory activities will focus on how statistics producers communicate uncertainty, and how they mitigate and manage the misuse of statistics and data. We will also focus our work on activities which support statistics producers in engaging with, understanding and meeting the varying needs of a wide range of users of data and statistics.
2023/24 highlights
Our wide-ranging outputs and high-profile public interventions helped us achieve our ambition to safeguard statistics that serve the public good, supported by our Intelligent Transparency campaign. At the start of 2023/24, we had hoped to accelerate our interventions programme, stepping into public debate in a timelier way to clarify how statistics should be interpreted. indicate that we are seeing definite gains this year, and we continue to challenge ourselves.
This work will be even more important as we approach a general election. The election will significantly impact our work; electoral campaigns, where parties vie with each other for the electorate’s support, typically involve some of the most prominent uses of statistics in the public eye.
In 2023/24 (and continuing into 2024/25), we wanted to focus on factors supporting public confidence in statistics – for example, promoting better communication of statistics. We are in the early days of our Communicating Statistics programme, but one of our most significant reports in 2023 was on Revisions to GDP. While we recognised the effectiveness of ONS’s approach to revising GDP, we set a number of requirements that we determined ONS should fulfil to improve communication. In 2024, we will continue to support ONS in implementing these requirements – the last Quarterly National Accounts of 2023 showed that ONS has already taken steps forward.
Throughout 2023/24, we worked on two issues related to sex and gender identity in data and statistics – updating our regulatory guidance and a review of statistics on gender identity based on data collected in the 2021 England and Wales Census.
Our new guidance provides a framework for the statistical system to support the effective collection, use and communication of statistics on sex and gender identity. We have published an interim report on the gender identity statistics from the 2021 England and Wales Census which sets out our findings based on the question testing, quality assurance, communication and engagement with users undertaken by ONS. Our final report will be published in early 2024/25.
Illustrations of how we are delivering impact
Asylum Backlog:
We have received a number of concerns about asylum statistics and data used by ministers over the last year. In many cases, the concerns related to claims about the size of the backlog or the number of legacy cases that had been cleared by the UK Government since it came to power. Many of these claims were made before the underlying data were available to the public. We judged that the use of statistics in such cases was not in line with our intelligent transparency principles. We engaged with the Home Office at both a working and senior level to ensure that our expectations were clear and to support the analytical team in providing ad hoc data when it was aware that a claim using data that were not already in the public domain would be made. This engagement led to positive results. In our most recent case relating to claims about asylum backlog figures, while we were clear that the Prime Ministers’ tweet lacked appropriate context, the Home Office did present ad hoc data alongside its press release providing necessary context around the statement and ensuring public access to the data.
Gender Identity:
We heard concerns from members of the public about the quality of the gender identity data collected in the 2021 England and Wales Census. We reviewed the concerns and wrote to ONS on 24 April advising that we would be undertaking a short review of the gender identity data. We published an interim report in October 2023 setting out our findings based on a review of the testing, quality assurance, communication and engagement with users undertaken by ONS. ONS has since published its investigation of the quality of the 2021 census’s gender-identity data. We will review this research and engage with users before publishing a follow-up report with our updated findings.
Tax and National Insurance Contributions:
We received a number of concerns around claims about how much an average employee would benefit as a result of the National Insurance Contributions (NIC) change that took effect earlier this year. We judged that the claim had been clear in its context (as it specifically referred to the impact of the NIC change taking place on the day of the claim and not to the wider range of personal tax changes taking effect this year) and the available data (on what an average employee salary was) were in the public domain for anyone who wanted to check.
Build partnerships to champion good practice principles for data and analysis that inform the public
The change we want to see
We will continue our work outside of official statistics. Our focus will be on working with organisations and with teams within government departments who are not official statistics producers but who produce and communicate data and analysis that are used in the public domain. These types of data and analysis are often likely to be perceived and used by others as if they were official statistics, even if they have not been designated as such. We will continue our engagement with data influencers and data users to support us with this focus.
2023/24 highlights
At OSR, we support good evidence that informs the public. Our focus is on official statistics. But we also recognise the role that evaluation plays in providing insight into what works in government policies and programmes. We have been developing our work to support the transparency of evaluations, in partnership with the Evaluation Task Force – for example, working towards a guest blog from the head of the task force, published in April 2024.
We set out our Areas of Research Interest (ARI) in 2023. These are framed around our vision of statistics that serve the public good. We set out research questions we are interested in learning more about, what we can offer researchers and how we decide who to collaborate with. The questions have resonated well with the research community.
We have been building on our analytical leadership work, considering how this can be enabled across all professions. Our published report sets out the findings from our review and, drawing on case studies, looks at how analytical leadership can be demonstrated and enabled across government. This report is relevant for all who want to foster a stronger, data-driven culture in their organisations, offering actionable suggestions for people in different professions and levels of seniority.
We are seeing an ever-growing list of organisations who are voluntarily adopting the Code of Practice, and we have announced the latest winners of the Statistical Excellence in Trustworthiness, Quality and Value Award (run in a partnership with the Royal Statistical Society and Civil Service World). OSR will continue to promote the use of the Code of Practice for Statistics, drawing on ideas and feedback gathered as part of our Code Review.
Illustrations of how we are delivering impact
Data Sharing and Linkage for the Public Good:
This is an area we have been monitoring and commenting on over the last five years. In July we published a review of data sharing and linkage across government. Despite some excellent progress in creating linked datasets and making them available for research, analysis and statistics across the UK, we found there is still uncertainty about how to share and link data in a legal and ethical way and about the public perception of data sharing and linkage. There is also a lack of clarity about data access processes and data availability and data standards across government. Unless significant changes are implemented, we are concerned the progress that has been made could be lost. Our report made 16 recommendations that, if realised, will enable government to confront ingrained challenges and to move towards greater data sharing and linkage for the public good.
We shared our plan to use the report to engage across and beyond government, working with others to help realise our recommendations. Over 20 organisations contributed directly to the review, with many others providing feedback. We discussed the report with a small group of academics and independent researchers, each of whom has expertise and interest in the social impacts of technology and who generously gave their time. This report represents our ambition to work with partners who share our strategic aims, and to commit to ongoing campaigns that are fundamental to delivering public good from data and statistics. We have followed up this year with a series of blogs, but we know there is still much to do, and our campaign to see our recommendations implemented is at the forefront of our plans for the coming year.