Policy Press
9 The control and ‘fitness for purpose’ of UK official statistics
Abstract
This chapter describes the evolution of UK Official Statistics over an 80 year period under the influence of personalities, politics and government policies, new user needs and changing technology. These have led to changing institutional structures – such as the Statistics Commission - and periodic oscillations in what statistics are created and the ease of their accessibility by the public. The chapter concludes with the impact of the first major statistical legislation for 60 years, particularly as a consequence of its creation of the UK Statistics Authority. This has included major investment in quality assurance of National and Official Statistics and in professional resourcing. These changes are very welcome, as is the statutory specification of government statistics as a public good by the 2007 Statistics and Registration Service Act. But problems of access to some data sets and the pre-release of key economic statistics to selected groups of users remain. Given the widespread societal consequences of the advent of new technologies, what we collect and how we do it will inevitably continue to change rapidly.
Abstract
This chapter describes the evolution of UK Official Statistics over an 80 year period under the influence of personalities, politics and government policies, new user needs and changing technology. These have led to changing institutional structures – such as the Statistics Commission - and periodic oscillations in what statistics are created and the ease of their accessibility by the public. The chapter concludes with the impact of the first major statistical legislation for 60 years, particularly as a consequence of its creation of the UK Statistics Authority. This has included major investment in quality assurance of National and Official Statistics and in professional resourcing. These changes are very welcome, as is the statutory specification of government statistics as a public good by the 2007 Statistics and Registration Service Act. But problems of access to some data sets and the pre-release of key economic statistics to selected groups of users remain. Given the widespread societal consequences of the advent of new technologies, what we collect and how we do it will inevitably continue to change rapidly.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- List of figures, tables and boxes vii
- Notes on contributors ix
- Foreword xv
- Preface xix
- General introduction 1
-
How data are changing
- Statistical work: the changing occupational landscape 13
- The creation and use of big administrative data 23
- Data analytics 35
- Social media data 47
-
Counting in a globalised world
- Adult skills surveys and transnational organisations: globalising educational policy 65
- Using survey data: towards valid estimates of poverty in the South 79
- Counting the population in need of international protection globally 91
- Tax justice and the challenges of measuring illicit financial flows 103
-
Statistics and the changing role of the state
- The control and ‘fitness for purpose’ of UK official statistics 119
- The statistics of devolution 133
- Welfare reform: national policies with local impacts 145
- From ‘welfare’ to ‘workfare’, and back again? Social insecurity and the changing role of the state 157
- Access to data and NHS privatisation: reducing public accountability 171
-
Economic life
- The ‘distribution question’: measuring and evaluating trends in inequality 187
- Labour market statistics 199
- The financial system: money makes the world go around 213
- The difficulty of building comprehensive tax avoidance data 225
- Tax and spend decisions: did austerity improve financial numeracy and literacy? 237
-
Inequalities in health and wellbeing
- Health divides 251
- Measuring social wellbeing 265
- Re-engineering health policy research to measure equity impacts 277
- The Generation Game: ending the phoney information war between young and old 291
-
Advancing social progress through critical statistical literacy
- The Radical Statistics Group: using statistics for progressive social change 307
- Lyme disease politics and evidence-based policy making in the UK 319
- Counting the uncounted: contestations over casualisation data in Australian universities 327
- The quantitative crisis in UK sociology 337
- Critical statistical literacy and interactive data visualisations 349
- Full Fact 359
- What a difference a dataset makes? Data journalism and/as data activism 365
- Epilogue: progressive ways ahead 375
- Index 381
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- List of figures, tables and boxes vii
- Notes on contributors ix
- Foreword xv
- Preface xix
- General introduction 1
-
How data are changing
- Statistical work: the changing occupational landscape 13
- The creation and use of big administrative data 23
- Data analytics 35
- Social media data 47
-
Counting in a globalised world
- Adult skills surveys and transnational organisations: globalising educational policy 65
- Using survey data: towards valid estimates of poverty in the South 79
- Counting the population in need of international protection globally 91
- Tax justice and the challenges of measuring illicit financial flows 103
-
Statistics and the changing role of the state
- The control and ‘fitness for purpose’ of UK official statistics 119
- The statistics of devolution 133
- Welfare reform: national policies with local impacts 145
- From ‘welfare’ to ‘workfare’, and back again? Social insecurity and the changing role of the state 157
- Access to data and NHS privatisation: reducing public accountability 171
-
Economic life
- The ‘distribution question’: measuring and evaluating trends in inequality 187
- Labour market statistics 199
- The financial system: money makes the world go around 213
- The difficulty of building comprehensive tax avoidance data 225
- Tax and spend decisions: did austerity improve financial numeracy and literacy? 237
-
Inequalities in health and wellbeing
- Health divides 251
- Measuring social wellbeing 265
- Re-engineering health policy research to measure equity impacts 277
- The Generation Game: ending the phoney information war between young and old 291
-
Advancing social progress through critical statistical literacy
- The Radical Statistics Group: using statistics for progressive social change 307
- Lyme disease politics and evidence-based policy making in the UK 319
- Counting the uncounted: contestations over casualisation data in Australian universities 327
- The quantitative crisis in UK sociology 337
- Critical statistical literacy and interactive data visualisations 349
- Full Fact 359
- What a difference a dataset makes? Data journalism and/as data activism 365
- Epilogue: progressive ways ahead 375
- Index 381
