RSSeNEWS to be determined...

Six themes are to guide the work of new National Statistician, Jil Matheson, she told a packed meeting organised by the Royal Statistical Society’s Official Statistics Section and National Statistics Working Party.

The themes relate to the production of official statistics, the work of official statisticians and the profile of the Government Statistical Service (GSS) and are:

• keeping official statistics relevant to the needs of society
• ensuring official statistics are of high quality; developing methods and sources and sharing best practice
• making official statistics properly accessible and impactful, and of clear and documented provenance
• official statisticians feeling proud of their role, confident in working independently alongside their policy colleagues,  working closely with users and not seen as “eggheads”
• keeping a high public profile, and improving public understanding of the value of statistics
• international collaborations can only intensify and should be developed.

In opening her remarks, Jil Matheson, noted that the context and production of statistics was continually changing. She reviewed the development of the statistical service from the first census in 1801 through to the establishment of the Central Statistical Office in the 1940s and the Office for National Statistics in the 1990s, and most recently the setting up of the UK Statistics Authority.

She highlighted the requirement to “serve the public good” as set out in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, returning to it in her concluding remarks by saying the next move could well be from this to the democratising role of statistics.

Throughout her talk she emphasised the importance of recognising that official statistics must be relevant to all citizens; she welcomed the Society’s work on increasing statistical literacy and hoped to work with the RSS on this.

Keith Dugmore, former chair of the Statistics User Forum, responded to the talk ahead of a wide range of questions from the audience. He identified some challenges for the GSS including extending the use of administrative data, publicising effectively the use and value of the statistics that are currently produced, and stressing the importance of involving users early in the decision making processes of the GSS.