Summary of progress against the four high-level priorities

The four high-level priorities span the full breadth of sessions convened at the inaugural Assembly. A summary of progress against the high-level priorities and wider related work is provided below, building on the December 2025 update. Annex A provides a line-by-line update against each recommendation from all 15 sessions.

High-level Priority 1: User engagement

Re-invigorate sustained and effective user engagement, in which official statistics producers take a lead in understanding the needs for statistics and curating relevant sources, to help answer the questions that the public, businesses, local government, the media and academics, as well as policymakers have about the economic, social and environmental situation. This would also help understand and increase the value of statistics.

The significant efforts of the GSS to ensure more sustained and effective user engagement are demonstrated by the number of recommendations from the Assembly’s Independent Report that are in progress or completed (see Annex A). GSS Heads of Professions (HoPs) have also been sharing examples of effective and less effective user engagement to improve our collective knowledge and expertise.

The Office for Statistics Regulation’s (OSR) updated Code of Practice emphasised the importance of user engagement, including a new requirement for producers to publish a public involvement and engagement strategy. Implementation of the Code for user engagement was the subject of a roundtable led by OSR and the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) in February 2026. The main conclusions from that session were:

• The importance of a genuinely relational and participatory model of user engagement,
• Strengthening transparency, communication and the ‘feedback loop’ can build trust, and
• Consistent, system‑wide engagement standards under the Code of Practice can improve the system.

Building on this, work to engage the GSS and a diverse range of users has fed into the development of draft principles for user engagement. These draft principles are:

• Engage users early in planning and development, shaping strategy and approaches, anticipating user needs (not just respond to queries or complaints),
• Maintain positive, transparent and continuous dialogue with users about processes, decisions, and constraints,
• Always close the feedback loop with timely responses,
• Adopt consistent, structured and coordinated engagement that is guided by shared standards and frameworks,
• Focus on methods and channels that enhance two-way engagement, are inclusive, recognise diverse users and use appropriate approaches to make it easy for existing and new users to engage with us, and
• Measure the effectiveness of engagement, show clear outcomes and demonstrate how user feedback has shaped priorities.

We welcome further feedback from users on the principles, which will be incorporated into the development of our GSS user engagement strategy to set standards across the statistical system, provide guidance and capture best practice. We will develop the strategy iteratively based on user insights and plan to publish it by the end of 2026.

Within the ONS, significant efforts have been made to strengthen policies on responding in a timely fashion to public enquiries and increasing transparency around how decisions (particularly related to prioritisation) are made. An Incident Response Plan has been developed by the Statistics HoP office to ensure that the ONS, and wider GSS, manage errors in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics and do so in a way that supports trustworthiness in statistics by communicating transparently with users and stakeholders.

There is more to be done, including ensuring we reach a broader range of users through our engagement and that we are transparent around any user needs that the GSS is not currently able to meet. To this end, the ONS recently published details of how it plans and prioritises its work. It is using a tiering model for ONS outputs based on the level of impact that a statistical output is expected to have and the decisions they inform. This ensures that resources are focused on improving the statistics that carry the greatest weight for the UK. The ONS has also introduced a structured “waiting room” approach to ensure that its significant change activity is appropriately sequenced and resourced, which will help protect quality and delivery confidence. Users appreciate that resources are constrained across the statistical system, so it is important for producers to be transparent about difficult decisions and trade-offs and involve users in prioritisation.

High-level Priority 2: More granular statistics

Develop a portfolio of official and unofficial sources, along with use of appropriate methodologies, to ensure user needs for more granular statistics are met (small areas, urban/rural, sub-groups of society, under-represented groups, and so on).

Improvements in how we collaborate across local government is a key, ongoing area of success here, strengthened through initiatives like the ONS Local service. Strong relationships continue to be built through Mayoral Strategic Authorities, the Mayoral Data Council, and the Combined Authority Liaison Group, who will help agree on how to deliver some of the recommendations. ONS Local also coordinates a series of webinars and workshops providing insights into new statistics, local initiatives and building capability in local areas. Local government needs will continue to be championed across the GSS, including through the creation of opportunities for access to GSS governance structures, such as GSS HoPs meetings where joint papers have been presented.

As part of prioritisation processes, and in response to a recommendation from the Assembly Independent Report, a review of subnational outputs has taken place within the ONS to ensure resources are being focused on the highest impact areas. This has meant the pace with which the ONS can progress certain recommendations is slower than some users would have liked, recognising the commitment to focus on other important user needs. More broadly across the GSS we are actively listening so we can prioritise effectively, however, the GSS recognises it cannot meet every user need in this area.

An example of where the GSS is prioritising activity is around the upcoming local government reorganisation in England. This will bring about new structures that need evidence to make decisions about services and infrastructure for the people who live there. ONS teams are working alongside the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to ensure new geographical boundaries are in place in a timely way for statistics to support decision-making.

In March 2025, ONS Local established the Rural Statistics Working Group, bringing together stakeholders from rural, coastal and island communities to discuss statistical issues that affect them, working alongside MHCLG and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to understand and overcome challenges. This is an important development in this space, which will reflect concerns around insufficient statistical granularity on rural areas. It is also strengthening the voice of diverse users so that the system can respond to their needs.

The GSS will continue to raise awareness of challenges and promote the importance of granular statistics. Making a concerted effort to ensure the progress reflected encompasses the whole of the GSS will be an important feature of the next update.

High-level Priority 3: Administrative data

Commit to, invest in, and take a leadership position in a significant scaling up in the use of administrative data, as well as improvement of its quality and coherence, across the entire portfolio of sources of official statistics, including government departments and external bodies, alongside and integrated with surveys, censuses, and other types of data.

A key development in the administrative data landscape has been the establishment of a cross-GSS Administrative Data Steering Group. This has already helped to build a strong understanding of work underway across Departments, shared some excellent case studies from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the ONS. The Steering Group has also sought views from members on the practical challenges experienced at a working level. GSS practitioners are well versed in using and understanding admin data, but systemic change is required to drive improvements through the system. Colleagues are asking for more support and engagement from senior leaders and GSS HoPs, as well as greater capability building and opportunities to learn and discuss with peers, focused on critical data sources and themes. The establishment of the National Statistician’s Office (NSO) is already providing support in advancing the use of administrative data in statistics across the GSS, but there is further progress to be made.

Wider practical actions are being progressed by the cross-GSS Administrative Data Steering Group. A deep dive into two areas of official statistics which use administrative information from HMRC operational systems will explore the end-to-end data journey from the perspective of the official statistics producer. Secondly, the group is seeking to address identified gaps in GSS capabilities through written guidance, training and competency frameworks. It is clear that more can be done to enable better shared understanding, for example, through the development of “Data sharing and linkage; a guide for making best use of administrative data,” or “Using administrative data in official statistics – a book of methods” to tackle the common issues experienced for operational, data/digital and analyst data users. The cross-GSS Administrative Data Steering Group will assess whether this work is feasible.

There has been an increase in the use of administrative data in the development of ONS statistics (such as using Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and Registration and Population Interaction Database (RAPID) datasets for key economic and population outputs). An important indicator of progress is the fact that new projects utilising administrative data are being established, including in the ONS labour market portfolio.

Understanding the quality of administrative data sources is paramount as their use is increased in both official and unofficial statistics. Within the ONS, data quality metrics, metadata and quality scores for critical data sources are being implemented to ensure quality standards are being upheld. Engagement is also underway between the ONS Data Governance Office (DGO), the GSS Harmonisation Team, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), the Government Digital Service (GDS) Architecture team, and the Central Digital and Data Office (CDO) to understand where greater standardisation is needed for digital data architectures for administrative data.

High-level Priority 4: UK-wide statistics

Recognise the needs for UK-wide statistics and advocate for, and support, harmonised data where desirable.

A long-term GSS coherence strategy, published by the end of autumn, will explore different options for improving governance, with steer provided by the Inter Administration Committee (IAC). This may lead to the establishment of a separate forum to develop a plan for statistical coherence, but no decision has yet been made.

A core strategic pillar of the strategy, that is particularly pertinent to the recommendations to come out of the Assembly, will focus on building an informed and evidence-based understanding of user needs, including exploring the user need at different geographical levels.

The Fraser of Allander Institute have developed a comparability framework tool, which provides a standardised measure when evaluating how comparable statistics are. Recommended by the OSR, this tool has the potential to assess the comparability landscape across the GSS and identify comparability gaps in priority areas. Statistical producers will be involved in the piloting and testing and will be asked for their feedback on the framework, so any required improvements can be made before a wider rollout.