2. The Assembly

A call for contributions to the Assembly event was widely publicised, and an Assembly Delivery Group including representatives from a range of sectors designed a schedule intending to cover as many as possible of the concerns.[1] This consisted of four plenary sessions and fifteen breakout sessions on particular topics, grouped into three blocks of five.

The plenary sessions included welcomes from the UK Statistics Authority Chair Sir Robert Chote and the RSS President Sir John Aston, and an introduction from Dame Kate Barker from the Assembly Delivery Group, who also commented on how the session topics were selected. A presentation on international perspectives involved Steve MacFeely (Head of Statistics, OECD), Francesca Kay (Assistant Director General, Central Statistics Office, Ireland), and Vipin Arora (Director of the US Bureau of Economic Analysis). The final plenary presented immediate feedback from the breakout sessions by Professor Sudlow; and a brief description of the next steps by Professor Hand.

The 15 breakout sessions covered the topics: Economic statistics and measuring progress; Coherence; Data sourcing, quality and methods; User engagement; Health disparities; Public sector performance; Data linkage; Net zero; The future of the Census; Business statistics; Equalities; Artificial intelligence (AI) and technology; Crime; Labour market; and Local and regional data.

863 people registered to take part, 556 attended on the day, with 330 in-person and the remainder online. A breakdown by sector is presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Breakdown of attendees by sector

98 Assembly attendees completed a post-event evaluation survey. From that, the key findings include:

• the average Assembly satisfaction rating (on a scale of 1 to 5) was 4.2
• 99% felt the Assembly met its aims
• 92% valued the plenary sessions
• 79% rated the breakout groups as good or excellent
• average satisfaction with the diversity of discussion themes (on a scale of 1 to 5) was 4.3
• 95% were likely to attend future Assemblies
• 69% said the Assembly enhanced user engagement

This report from the Assembly was prepared to a tight timetable, with the aim of feeding into the Authority’s preparation of its next five-year strategy. An initial draft was prepared by a subgroup of the National Statistician’s Expert User Advisory Committee (NSEUAC), which was refined by the entire NSEUAC. Input and clarification was also obtained from Professor Lievesley and Jonathan Everett (RSS).

[1] Organisations represented on the Delivery Group are: Academy of Social Sciences, British Chambers of Commerce, Government Statistical Service, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, National Statistician’s Expert User Advisory Committee, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, Office for Statistics Regulation, Royal Statistical Society, Scottish Government, UK Research and Innovation, UK Statistics Authority, Welsh Government, Westmoreland and Furness Council.