Programme Delivery

The perceptions that ONS had delivered well on the census, and during the pandemic, clearly influenced the ONS settlement in the 2021 Spending Round: the budgets for the three years beginning in 2022-23 included substantial ring-fenced funding for three programmes:

• Ambitious, Radical, Inclusive Economic Statistics – ARIES – £77m over three years;
• the Future Population and Migration System – FPMS – £140m with predecessor programme;
• the Integrated Data Service – IDS – £178m.

ARIES has successfully delivered step-change improvements to consumer prices inflation, business R&D, and public sector finance statistics. The programme had originally intended also to deliver several other improvements (e.g. to household finances), but as programme challenges became clearer, these were de-scoped to protect delivery of the highest value improvements.

FPMS aimed to use administrative data to enhance population and migration statistics, and migration estimates are now almost solely based on administrative data. Considerable effort was also expended to test whether administrative data could remove the need for the 2031 Census. There are mixed views on whether this was ever a realistic possibility, and on the value of some of the ideas pursued. FPMS programme funding was also used beyond the programme itself, to subsidise other population statistical activities that were not protected by ring fenced funding (for example, production activities, data acquisition and linking, and support for devolved administrations).

IDS has proved the most difficult programme for ONS. It has now delivered some ground-breaking data linkages, while protecting personal information. Building on earlier work, ONS can now, for example, assess the impact of various forms of surgery on patients’ propensity to return to work. However, at present the benefit cost ratio is very low, and IDS has low take-up by Government analysts outside ONS. It is also the case that substantial sums initially ringfenced for IDS have – with the HMT approval – been used to fund more general technology and data costs. And despite the IDS business case originally being in part predicated on the need urgently to replace the Secure Research Service, the two services are now running in parallel.

Those I spoke to in ONS drew two lessons from these experiences:

• that ONS should have built up a stronger capability in each production team for “continuous improvement”: doing so has the advantage of keeping activity closely targeted on the issues most of value for users, being nimble, and with low overheads; in contrast, the risk of relying largely on multi-year programmes is that they take on a life of their own, sometimes with substantial programme overheads, and while they might well make a material change in one area (as with consumer prices in ARIES) there is then little if any development on other, equally important statistics.
• where programmes are required, it is better for them to co-ordinate related activity across ONS (as ARIES), rather than gather resources into the programme and act largely independently of the rest of ONS (as many people perceive IDS); and to keep governance arrangements and project management proportionate to the task. Given that IDS also relied heavily on securing data from other Departments, several people – in and outside ONS – thought the programme initially adopted a “high handed” approach, essentially demanding data, and downplaying others’ concerns for example around security.

I commend the way these lessons are already being acted on, in the choices which ONS has been making while this review was underway. For the most part, the published plan to improve core economic statistics rests on building strong “continuous improvement” teams, with the right mixes of skills, within each production team. More continuous improvement can, of course, co-exist with traditional change programmes, where the extent of change necessitates that (as it did with developments on consumer prices).