| Information needed | Response |
|---|---|
| Title and link to statistical output | Index of Production, UK: December 2020 |
| Name of producer organisation | Office for National Statistics |
| Name and contact details of person dealing with report |
Debra Prestwood Statistical Head of Profession, Office for National Statistics, Government Buildings, Cardiff Road, Newport, NP10 8XG. |
| Name and contact details of Head of Profession for Statistics or Lead Official |
|
| Link to published statement about the breach (if relevant) |
N/A |
| Date of breach report | 12 February 2021 |
| Information needed | Response |
|---|---|
| Relevant principle(s) and practice(s) | Principle 3: Orderly release Practice 6: Statistics should be released to all users at 9.30am on a weekday. |
| Date of occurrence of breach | 12/02/21 |
Index of Production (IoP), UK: December 2020 was due to be published at 07:00 on 12 February 2020. The collection was in the publishing queue ahead of publication as scheduled. The publishing team ran their standard processes overnight to create timeseries and charts, which were made available to the output team for checking around 06:25am on the 12 February.
At 06:29 the output team checking the timeseries and charts informed the Publishing Team that they had spotted an error confirming the issue at 06:40 (that 2020 annual and quarterly 4-digit data was missing from the timeseries files produced in the overnight run despite being provided by the output team). This required removing the collection from the publishing queue to correct it, and at 06:48 the Publishing Team were unable to re-approve the collection for publication on time.
Unable to ensure the scheduled publication, the collection was published manually at 07:03.
No adverse reports were received via Social Media or Media Relations.
IoP data was available elsewhere in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) releases published at 07:00.
- Investigate whether the main release and the timeseries can be separated in the publishing queue so if there is an issue with the timeseries the main release can go out on its own to prevent a breach.
- Investigate if the Central Statistics Database (CSDB) files can be run earlier
- See if there are improvements to the processes used to produce the CSDB files to
reduce the chance of errors/ issues