Government Statistical Service

Providing new statistical insights during the pandemic

This is a case study for Principle V3: Clarity and Insight.

The Government Statistical Service (GSS) has been proactively responding to address user needs for both new data and enhanced insight during the pandemic. For example, HMRC statisticians have actively sought to answer society’s key questions about economic changes in a timely way through the preparation, production, and publication of new statistics on its Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) and its Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS). And the ONS has adapted its Opinion and Lifestyles Survey (OPN) to provide new insights on the social aspects of the pandemic, through its Coronavirus and the Social Impacts on Great Britain.

Economic insights from HMRC’s worker support schemes

The CJRS is a scheme for employers who can claim support with wage costs for employees put on furlough during the pandemic, while the SEISS supports self-employed individuals. Before the statistics were developed, HMRC started Tweeting daily information on both schemes in response to public requests for information. Simultaneously, HMRC quickly developed Experimental Official Statistics, to transparently provide useful information on the status of the schemes.

The new CJRS statistics include a headline time series and detailed statistics on jobs furloughed at the end of each month, with analysis by employer size and sector. Also covered is analysis of jobs furloughed by geography, employees’ age and gender and breakdowns by type of furlough (full and flexible). To produce the statistics, HMRC combined data from CJRS claims with data from their Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) Real Time Information (RTI) system. HMRC has further developed the statistics in response to user feedback and most recently added detailed industry breakdowns and figures for the total number of jobs put on furlough at any time since the start of the scheme.

HMRC’s February 2021 SEISS publication covers the third SEISS grant which was awarded by HMRC up to December 31, 2020. The information presented includes age of claimant; gender; sector of self-employment activity; and geography, with further breakdowns providing additional insights.

HMRC are open with users about aspects of uncertainty in estimates labelling the statistics and analysis by labelling them with a frank summary to ensure appropriate interpretations by users. The statistics are released in a timely manner at an interval that meets user needs, for both demographic and geographical breakdowns.

Social insights from the Opinions and Lifestyles Survey (OPN)

The OPN previously operated as a monthly telephone and online survey of British households, providing timely and relevant insights to its users. During the pandemic, it became an important source of information for understanding the social impact of the pandemic.

From 20 March 2020, the OPN became weekly and each week, some of the survey’s questions were changed to reflect changing circumstances and priorities. Since then, estimates measuring the impact of the pandemic on people, households and communities in Great Britain have been published on a weekly basis.

With a user group of a wide range of government departments, academics and charities providing input into the questions asked, the survey has been used to rapidly and flexibly provide information on areas of user interest such as: people’s compliance with government measures to stop the spread of COVID-19; people’s experiences of home-schooling and working from home; as well as people’s well-being and attitudes towards vaccination as the pandemic has progressed.

OPN summary results are presented with breakdowns by age, sex, region and country, and the published data sets include confidence interval s to enable their appropriate interpretation.

Summary

These examples demonstrate how the GSS is responding to the need for new statistics to enhance public insight and understanding around the economic and social aspects of the pandemic. HMRC have shown an understanding of the needs of different types of users, and have brought clarity and insight to the extent of the UK government’s economic response in support of workers during the pandemic. And by adapting the Opinion and Lifestyles Survey to focus on the social impacts of coronavirus, ONS has also proactively responded to the changing data needs of users and helped to provide robust and timely insights into public’s attitudes around coronavirus and government responses to it.

Improving the discoverability of UK official statistics

This is a case study for Principle V2: Accessibility

The UK’s diffuse statistical landscape

There are many public bodies that produce official statistics across the GSS. It is the totality of these statistical families that make up the UK’s statistical landscape. The data provided by these statistics helps to support the day-to-day running of government by:

Providing published evidence to help assess the impact of government policies and legislation and to evaluate outcomes
Helping to refine the delivery of front-line services by assessing the effectiveness of operations and identifying areas in need of improvement.

However, because the publication model for the UK’s statistical landscape is widely diffused, users must often search a large number of official websites to find the data they want. Many users are also at a disadvantage, if they are not experienced in navigating the UK’s statistical landscape.

The GSS Interactive Tools

The web-based GSS Interactive Tools allow users to search, filter, and explore official statistics from a single location, across a range of thematic areas. The tools achieve this by linking users to statistics of interest, while also allowing them to filter by numerous categories, including:

Statistical theme
Country or countries of interest
Organisation that produces the statistics
Geographic scales – from country-wide level, down in some cases, to scales smaller than local authority level
Frequency of publication – such as one off (ad hoc) publications, once a decade censuses, or weekly statistics
Number of years the statistics cover

The GSS Interactive Tools have been designed to work with common assistive technologies, such as screen readers, and adhere to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines “AAA” ratings (gold standard). The tools are also mobile and tablet native and the subject areas are regularly updated based on user needs (i.e. weekly for health statistics to quarterly for housing statistics), to ensure that content remains relevant.

Making official statistics more accessible

In November 2017, OSR published a systemic review of housing and planning statistics. The review showed that the diffuse nature of this particular landscape acted as a barrier to accessing data. This meant that UK housing and planning statistics, as a whole, fell short of the Code’s Accessibility principle.

In response, GSS members formed a Housing and Planning Statistics Working Group, including colleagues from many government departments and the Devolved Administrations. To improve the accessibility of official statistics, the group worked to provide proper signposting for users and potential users. This led to the development and launch of the GSS Interactive Tools for housing and planning statistics in September 2019.

The success of the tools, coupled with their reproducible nature, has since led to the inclusion of other statistical areas. The tools now include hundreds of statistical releases on the topics of:

This increased thematic coverage and successful engagement with users through social media and blogs, has driven continued growth in the number of users regularly using the tools.

Feedback

Feedback from users and stakeholders has been very positive and continues to come from a wide range of sectors, including:

Businesses
Charities
Universities
Local and national governments

The usefulness of a single access point for statistics is a common theme within the feedback. User-research continues to help refine the accessibility, content, and functionality of the tools. This ensures that the information provided is clear, concise, and does not rely on expert knowledge. This helps to further increase the accessibility of UK statistics to a broader range of potential users. These improvements have, in part, led to the nomination of the tools for a GSS Excellence Award.

OSR has also highlighted the positive impact that the tools have had on the accessibility of official statistics, via its:

Summary

The GSS Interactive Tools showcase how following accessibility best practice increases the value of official statistics and data, for users and potential users. Built to meet a broad range of needs, the tools accommodate people with different levels of subject knowledge and different accessibility requirements. This means that the burden of finding the information users need is less when using the tools. This helps to open up official statistics to a greater number of people who would have otherwise not have accessed them, including users of screen readers and other assistive technologies.

Monitoring and reducing survey burden

This is a case study for Principle V5: Efficiency and proportionality.

The GSS publishes guidance on monitoring and reducing respondent burden when carrying out statistical surveys, which directly supports Principle V5 of the Code.

The guidance recommends that in order to monitor respondent burden, statistics producers should:

collect data on the respondent burden associated with their statistical surveys
estimate the costs of compliance to give a measure of respondent burden
compare the costs of compliance with previous years’ figures
investigate any substantial changes and take appropriate action to try to reduce the burden, and
explain to users any variations in compliance costs caused by changes in the nature of a survey, such as a sample increase.

The guidance provides the example of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) annual statistics tracking the compliance costs incurred by businesses and local authorities in complying with its statistical surveys.

The guidance also recommends that each department appoints a Survey Control Liaison Officer (SCLO), who is responsible for supporting their statistical Head of Profession in monitoring and reducing respondent burden. It highlights the network of SCLOs managed by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) Survey Control Unit, which produce guidance on what is expected of SCLOs in the Northern Ireland context. NISRA also produce annual assessments of the burden on the businesses, households and individuals completing the statistical surveys issued by Northern Ireland Departments each year.

In terms of reducing burden, the GSS guidance identifies a range of actions to ease the burden placed on survey respondents. It highlights how the National Travel Survey (NTS) has implemented several solutions to better meet user needs whilst reducing the burden for participants and interviewers. These include:

an annual review of the NTS questionnaire achieved by identifying sections of the survey which take the longest to complete, in order to remove questions where the burden is disproportionate to user needs
conducting cognitive testing on any new questions before being approved to add to the NTS, to assesses how well participants understand each question and the level of burden it creates

setting up an online panel to manage the large volume of requests for new questions, creating shorter and more targeted surveys towards sub-groups where it would be disproportionate to ask everyone the full NTS, and with much quicker turnaround of results, and
the development of a digital travel diary and extensive research to establish how a digital diary could simultaneously reduce burden on respondents and interviewers and improve data quality.

Feedback has been positive, with interviewers commenting the NTS is now taking less time to complete and early analysis indicates the survey is shorter. The results of the user feedback survey, cognitive testing and digital diary developments can be found on the NTS pages on GOV.UK.

This example highlights some of the best practice already undertaken within the GSS to support the monitoring and reduction of respondent burden when carrying out statistical surveys, and the GSS guidance available to statistics producers looking to undertake such activities.