Use Made of Official Statistics

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Use Made of Official Statistics
Use Made of Official Statistics stage 1
Rosalyn Harper Royal Statistical Society 18
January 2007
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Use Made of Official Statistics
Research Outline

• Objective - examine extent to which official
  statistics influence decision making in public
  and private organisations
• Methods - literature review and interviews with
  users in public and private organisations
• First in a two stage project

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Use Made of Official Statistics
Findings Overview users experiences

• Who are the users of Official Statistics?
• What are Official Statistics used for?
• What are the needs of users?

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Use Made of Official Statistics
Who are the users of Official Statistics?

• Majority worked in an analytical role providing
  insights into specific areas
• Expertise and confidence in using data sources/
  statistics varied greatly
• Implications for data provision

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Use Made of Official Statistics
What are Official Statistics used for?

• Official Statistics used extensively, considered
  essential to good decision making
• there wont be a data series the ONS produce
  that we wont have looked at and/or used
  regularly. Everything you name it, we will
  scour everything its our job to gain insight
  on the economy and then apply it to our business

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Use Made of Official Statistics
What are Official Statistics used for?

• Census data
• at the very local level, we can use it to
  understand business performancewe would
  understand better if a branch isnt selling
  mortgages in a predominately elderly catchment,
  so we would hopefully target savers in that
  catchment

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Use Made of Official Statistics
What are Official Statistics used for?

• National survey data
• Administrative data

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Crime Statistics User Perspectives
Some examples of how used

• Monitoring
• Targeting
• Lobbying
• Internal research

• Resource allocation
• Planning services
• Bidding for funds
• Policy development

Use Made of Official Statistics
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Use Made of Official Statistics
Users Needs timeliness
timeliness is an issue because Government has a
bit of an obsession with being as close to 100
accurate as you could possibly be. The hard
reality is its a trade off between speed and
accuracy and from a commercial perspective there
is probably too much accuracy and not enough
speed. I accept that accuracys a good thing
but not at any cost
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Use Made of Official Statistics
Users Needs accessibility

• Simplify the data structure
• Use common keys like ONS OAC

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Use Made of Official Statistics
Users Needs better planning

• Government set targets but perception of little
  planning on how to measure or collect the data
• you have your little old lady who sits in the
  cold. Well, we dont know if shes little, we
  dont know shes old, we dont know shes poor
  and we don't know shes sitting in the cold, so
  how do we know that we should be targeting her

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Use Made of Official Statistics
Next steps

• Larger study of use made underway (MORI)
• Publication of Commission Report Spring 2007
• Investigation of the public value of official
  statistics

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Use Made of Official Statistics
Separate research project on Accessibility

• Objectives - consider the accessibility of
  online official statistics, including
  retrievability, quality, format and the needs of
  users.
• Methods - mystery shopper approach, review of
  policies

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Use Made of Official Statistics
Contact details

• rosalyn.harper_at_statscom.org.uk
• abigail.armstrong_at_statscom.org.uk
• www.statscom.org.uk