National Statistician’s Data Ethics Advisory Committee

Ethics in statistics and research

The UK Statistics Authority  aims to mobilise the power of data to meet the greater demand from policy makers and users for more timely, frequent, accurate and relevant statistics for the public good to help Britain make better decisions. This involves making better use of pre-existing administrative, real time and big data using innovative methods, to produce more frequent, timely and accurate statistics for the public good accounting for a wide variety of user needs. To ensure that this work is completed to the highest ethical standards the UK Statistics Authority has established a robust ethical governance structure to provide transparent and timely ethical advice to the National Statistician that the access, use and sharing of public data for research and statistical purposes is ethical and for the public good. This work has included developing ethical principles and establishing a variety of transparent processes to assess proposed research against these principles.

The National Statistician’s Data Ethics Advisory Committee (NSDEC) has been established to advise the National Statistician that the access, use and sharing of public data, for research and statistical purposes, is ethical and for the public good. NSDEC will consider project and policy proposals, which make use of innovative and novel data, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS),the Government Statistical Service (GSS) and beyond, and advise the National Statistician on the ethical appropriateness of these.

NSDEC are scheduled to meet quarterly and will have a key role in ensuring transparency around the access, use and sharing of data for statistical purposes. All minutes will be published on the UK Statistics Authority website.