- Title Pages
- List of figures, tables and boxes
- Notes on contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- General introduction
-
Part I How data are changing:Part I editors:Humphrey Southall andJeff Evans -
1 Statistical work: the changing occupational landscape -
2 The creation and use of big administrative data -
3 Data analytics -
4 Social media data -
Part II Counting in a globalised world:Part II editors:Sally Ruane andJeff Evans -
5 Adult skills surveys and transnational organisations: globalising educational policy -
6 Using survey data: towards valid estimates of poverty in the South -
7 Counting the population in need of international protection globally -
8 Tax justice and the challenges of measuring illicit financial flows -
Part III Statistics and the changing role of the state:Part III editors:Sally Ruane andHumphrey Southall -
9 The control and ‘fitness for purpose’ of UK official statistics -
10 The statistics of devolution -
11 Welfare reform: national policies with local impacts -
12 From ‘welfare’ to ‘workfare’, and back again? Social insecurity and the changing role of the state -
13 Access to data and NHS privatisation: reducing public accountability -
Part IV Economic life: Part IV editors:Humphrey Southall ,Sally Ruane andJeff Evans -
14 The ‘distribution question’: measuring and evaluating trends in inequality -
15 Labour market statistics -
16 The financial system: money makes the world go around -
17 The difficulty of building comprehensive tax avoidance data -
18 Tax and spend decisions: did austerity improve financial numeracy and literacy? -
Part V Inequalities in health and wellbeing: Part V editors:Sally Ruane andHumphrey Southall -
19 Health divides -
20 Measuring social wellbeing -
21 Re-engineering health policy research to measure equity impacts -
22 The Generation Game: ending the phoney information war between young and old -
Part VI Advancing social progress through critical statistical literacy: Part VI editors:Jeff Evans ,Sally Ruane andHumphrey Southall -
23 The Radical Statistics Group: using statistics for progressive social change -
24 Lyme disease politics and evidence‑based policy making in the UK -
25 Counting the uncounted: contestations over casualisation data in Australian universities -
26 The quantitative crisis in UK sociology -
27 Critical statistical literacy and interactive data visualisations -
28 Full Fact -
29 What a difference a dataset makes? Data journalism and/as data activism - Epilogue: progressive ways ahead
- Index
The control and ‘fitness for purpose’ of UK official statistics
The control and ‘fitness for purpose’ of UK official statistics
- Chapter:
- (p.119) 9 The control and ‘fitness for purpose’ of UK official statistics
- Source:
- Data in Society
- Author(s):
David Rhind
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
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.
Keywords: Public good, public trust, Statistics Commission, UK Statistics Authority, technology
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- Title Pages
- List of figures, tables and boxes
- Notes on contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- General introduction
-
Part I How data are changing:Part I editors:Humphrey Southall andJeff Evans -
1 Statistical work: the changing occupational landscape -
2 The creation and use of big administrative data -
3 Data analytics -
4 Social media data -
Part II Counting in a globalised world:Part II editors:Sally Ruane andJeff Evans -
5 Adult skills surveys and transnational organisations: globalising educational policy -
6 Using survey data: towards valid estimates of poverty in the South -
7 Counting the population in need of international protection globally -
8 Tax justice and the challenges of measuring illicit financial flows -
Part III Statistics and the changing role of the state:Part III editors:Sally Ruane andHumphrey Southall -
9 The control and ‘fitness for purpose’ of UK official statistics -
10 The statistics of devolution -
11 Welfare reform: national policies with local impacts -
12 From ‘welfare’ to ‘workfare’, and back again? Social insecurity and the changing role of the state -
13 Access to data and NHS privatisation: reducing public accountability -
Part IV Economic life: Part IV editors:Humphrey Southall ,Sally Ruane andJeff Evans -
14 The ‘distribution question’: measuring and evaluating trends in inequality -
15 Labour market statistics -
16 The financial system: money makes the world go around -
17 The difficulty of building comprehensive tax avoidance data -
18 Tax and spend decisions: did austerity improve financial numeracy and literacy? -
Part V Inequalities in health and wellbeing: Part V editors:Sally Ruane andHumphrey Southall -
19 Health divides -
20 Measuring social wellbeing -
21 Re-engineering health policy research to measure equity impacts -
22 The Generation Game: ending the phoney information war between young and old -
Part VI Advancing social progress through critical statistical literacy: Part VI editors:Jeff Evans ,Sally Ruane andHumphrey Southall -
23 The Radical Statistics Group: using statistics for progressive social change -
24 Lyme disease politics and evidence‑based policy making in the UK -
25 Counting the uncounted: contestations over casualisation data in Australian universities -
26 The quantitative crisis in UK sociology -
27 Critical statistical literacy and interactive data visualisations -
28 Full Fact -
29 What a difference a dataset makes? Data journalism and/as data activism - Epilogue: progressive ways ahead
- Index