Recommendation 3: Commit to the flow of critical administrative data

High-quality official statistics are an essential public service. The infrastructure that delivers them needs to be suitably robust and reliable so they can be published to the high standard users expect at the time users expect them.

A successful admin-based system requires a regular, timely and stable supply of critical administrative data from partners across the public sector, including certainty in its format and supporting metadata. Additionally, the ONS needs suppliers to notify them and work with them on any planned operational changes affecting the quality or content of critical administrative datasets, giving adequate notice, to assess and minimise the impact of such changes on statistical production.

The Digital Economy Act 2017 provided clearer legal routes for acquiring administrative data for statistics. Since then, the ONS’s work with data owners has made good progress accessing administrative data, which has enabled the research underpinning this recommendation.

However, experience shows this is not the guarantee of a predictable data supply on which a reliable system of population and migration statistics can be built. Agreed-upon supplies are interrupted too often, sometimes at short notice, and when data arrive, they are not always delivered in a usable form. This risk cannot be mitigated by the ONS alone, and the ONS will have greater success in producing admin-based statistics over the long term with support from across the public sector. Professor Lievesley’s Independent Review of the UK Statistics Authority called for an ‘effective system of responsible data sharing’ in order to ‘fully realise the potential of the data held by government’, a sentiment echoed by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s report “Transforming the UK’s Evidence Base”.

In a UK context, it is important that opportunities for improved population statistics are not limited to the ONS. Producers of statistics in Scotland and Northern Ireland need support in acquiring the data required to research admin-based estimates, with a potential future requirement for regular supply to support ongoing statistical production. 

Investment and improvements in the public sector’s administrative data estate will have widespread benefits across the system, including improving the data used for operational purposes across government service delivery. This would ensure that the information the ONS needs is present in these sources to the right level of quality, and this in turn is likely to create a virtuous circle by improving the quality of data for departments’ own operational uses.

The Authority would also welcome the Government’s support in implementing a previous recommendation of the Children’s Commissioner: that the ONS work with Cabinet Office to establish the best practice for designing administrative systems (across government) to facilitate bringing together family records.

The Authority encourages the UK and Welsh Governments to support the ONS in conversation with bodies responsible for administrative data collection. It should be a shared objective of all parties to identify means to improve the detail available from administrative sources. The ONS has expertise in designing and harmonising data collection, which could be applied to make improvements to administrative systems. This would ensure that variables are consistently measured. While the ONS would seek to make improvements to better suit statistical purposes, departments would reciprocally benefit from greater quality, consistency and value in the data collected.