Statistics

Working with producers of statistics

September 19, 2024 by lisaclark No Comments | Category Statistics Policy

This is the second of two blogs published by the Office of the Chief Statistician in Scottish Government in response to recommendations of the Independent Review of the UK Statistics Authority by Professor Denise Lievesley. Through the blogs we touch on the purpose of Government statistics which are fundamental to open and transparent government and accountability. We consider how best to produce statistics drawing on themes from Scottish Government’s Statistics Group Strategic Priorities that promotes statistical improvement and good practice in statistics production.

In this blog we explore some of the recommendations relating to how we work with other producers of statistics in the UK statistical system. We cover the importance of using data about Scotland for Scotland, and how there’s scope to be braver in how we produce statistics.

 

Background

In March 2024, Cabinet Office published the Independent Review of the UK Statistics Authority by Professor Denise Lievesley. The Review makes recommendations for the UK statistical system. While they are mainly directed at the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), several of the recommendations are relevant to Scottish Government statistics.

This blog focuses on recommendations on harmonisation of UK statistics and data sharing.

Harmonisation and alignment of UK statistics

Being in a devolved Government, our statisticians are often asked how comparable their statistics are with the rest of the UK. Recommendation 5 in the Lievesley Review says:

“The UKSA should build on existing work and lead discussions between the four nations and strengthen the Concordat of Statistics to encourage more UK wide data by creating common standards and improving harmonisation where appropriate and mutually agreed. HM Treasury should ensure that funding is available to support the harmonisation of key data.”

We align Scottish statistics with the rest of the UK where it makes sense to do so. In 2021 the Scottish Government’s then Permanent Secretary signed the UK Concordat on Statistics which is the framework for co-operation on statistics between the UK Government and devolved Government. Aligning statistics with other UK nations helps achieve statistical coherence, which is one of the steers in our strategic priorities. Aligning statistics with the rest of the UK is sensible in many cases as it allows the performance of Scotland to be directly compared against the rest of the UK, highlighting successes of devolution and areas for improvement.

However, the top priority for Scottish statistics is to reflect the picture in Scotland to support decision making in Scotland. An example of this was the decision to delay Scotland’s Census to 2022 while the rest of the UK conducted their censuses in 2021. National Records of Scotland concluded in 2020 that conducting the Census in 2021 may have had a significant risk to data quality. Delaying the census balanced this risk against the ability to directly align UK wide statistics.

Professor Lievesley identified resource as an issue with alignment; devolved Governments have proportionately fewer staff compared to ONS. In the previous blog we talked about statistics producers having the best ‘helicopter view’ of the landscape in which their statistics are produced and used. Producers must judge how easy or difficult it is to develop comparable statistics to the rest of the UK and balance against the importance of alignment in their context and the resources they have available. This will be more challenging in some areas. For example, in education, with different school systems, or health, which has different ways ambulance waiting times are recorded across countries in the UK.

Professor Lievesley recommended additional funding from HM Treasury to support harmonisation. While this is welcome, deployment of funding needs to be carefully thought through, for example, which statistical organisation is best suited to support harmonisation.

Data sharing

Recommendation 6 says:

“The centre of government, led by Cabinet Office, HM Treasury and No. 10 must actively work to resolve the systemic, often cultural, barriers to data sharing between departments… [they] must prioritise data sharing for statistics and research purposes”.

Our fundamental view is that data held by other UK Government departments about Scotland should be made available to Scotland. It is a mission of the Office of the Chief Statistician to access existing data to help the Scottish Government, other agencies and researchers to improve the efficiency of policy making decisions.

We agree with Professor Lievesley that cultural barriers to sharing data across the UK statistical system need broken down. Legal gateways exist to share data for statistical purposes in an ethical way but are underused.

The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) report on Transforming the UK’s Evidence Base acknowledges that data sharing takes too long and isn’t used widely enough. Current arrangements take up a disproportionate amount of statistician resource, especially as they are not information governance professionals by trade. More data sharing shouldn’t put additional strain on statistical resource within devolved Governments.

Being bolder

The discourse on data sharing reflects how the statistics system can be risk averse. Statistics producers need to be bolder about how they produce their statistics. The Royal Statistical Society’s Vision for Public Statistics advocates that producers should start from identifying questions that need statistics to help answer them rather than defaulting to what’s available. They also say that data to promote the public good needs to be drawn from a wider range of sources than present.

Our strategic priorities empower statisticians to think creatively about how they produce statistics. They should be open minded to using a range of data sources, evaluate if their quality is fit for purpose for the needs of users and adequately communicate uncertainty. Producers should be open to weighing up the risks and benefits of publishing more granular data, for example, at smaller geographical areas or different equality groupings.

Only by being open to being bolder in taking decisions to maximise the value of statistics can we truly meet the needs of users and properly respond to Professor Lievesley’s recommendations

Tags: Office of the Chief Statistician, Scotland, statistics

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