| Information needed | Response |
|---|---|
| Title and link to statistical output | Labour market statistics time series |
| Name of producer organisation | Office for National Statistics |
| Name and contact details of person dealing with report | Debra Prestwood stat.hopoffice@ons.gov.uk |
| Name and contact details of Head of Profession for Statistics or Lead Official | Statistical Head of Profession, Office for National Statistics, Government Buildings, Cardiff Road, Newport, NP10 8XG. |
| Link to published statement about the breach (if relevant) | |
| Date of breach report | 27/04/2021
|
| 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 | 20/04/2021 |
Labour Market Overview, UK: April 2021 was due to be published at 07:00 on 20 April 2021. Due to the volume of material being published, the release was split into two collections for publication. The first collection, containing all bulletins and datasets published as planned.
The second collection, containing all the time series data, was delayed by 13 minutes. As a result, the headline figures for Employment and Unemployment rates on the ONS Homepage were not updated during this time.
The cause of the delay was an inaccurate error message in the publishing system, just ahead of the scheduled release time, which led to a pausing in the publishing process to investigate. Having determined that there was no underlying problem, the timeseries collection was published manually as soon as possible, at 07:13.
The delay was queried by one journalist following the late publication, who could not see the correct data. He was advised to clear his browser cache to access it.
The inaccurate error message has been corrected to reassure the Publishing Team that there is no problem with the publishing process and no need to investigate by interrupting it. The team is exploring whether time series data can be made available to start the publishing process earlier.