Voluntary Application

Highly Commended for the Award for Statistical Excellence in Trustworthiness, Quality and Value 2021

“I am delighted that the Test and Trace publication team has been recognised in this way. We stood up the publication very rapidly at the start of the pandemic, ten days after the launch of the Test and Trace Operation and have worked hard to ensure it has changed as the operation has developed. Everyone who has worked on this publication since it started has worked hard to ensure we adhere as much as we can to the Code of Practice whilst recognising that this is management information about the constantly evolving NHS Test and Trace operation. This award recognises their efforts in helping to ensure that we are transparent about its performance.”

Lucy Vickers, Deputy Director – Statistics and Data Science and Head of Profession for Statistics

Who are the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC)?

We are a ministerial department working for the UK Government. We support ministers in leading the nation’s health and social care to help people live more independent, healthier lives for longer. DHSC publish weekly statistics on NHS Test and Trace (England) across all four testing pillars. This provides a weekly update on the implementation and performance of the NHS Test and Trace in England. We launched our first publication in June 2020, just two weeks after the Test and Trace programme started. Since February 2021, our team has published additional data alongside the core metrics, focusing on rapid asymptomatic testing in England.

Applying the code

We have been committed to applying the Code of Practice since our first publication on June 11 2020. A statement of compliance with the code of practice was published on June 18 2020, showing that we found complying to the code to be paramount, especially during a time where testing data was heavily criticised.

We have also responded to a rapid review the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) undertook in July 2020 which set out several suggested improvements. Our team released a re-structured version of the publication in August to better meet user needs. Since then, we have continued to improve the publication based on user feedback.

We have applied the Code to many aspects of our work. For example, pilots involving the use of rapid testing started from November 2020 and ramped up from January 2021. In response to this, the increased public interest, and the need for transparency, our team developed a publication roadmap outlining how a new statistical publication could ensure information on the rapid asymptomatic testing programme was published in an orderly fashion. The team worked at pace to set this up and continue to expand it to provide information on the different rapid testing use cases.

Trustworthiness, Quality and Value

Our Test and Trace statistics enhance the public value of statistics. To do so, our statistics are transparent, consistent with other published figures, and timely. We also add new breakdowns to our statistics as they become available, which grants greater insight to users of our statistics.

We make sure any Data Quality issues are made available in the methodology section of our background information including any limitations and reasons for revisions we may have made. The statistics are published weekly regardless of the trend they show to inform public debate, decision making, and raise public trust in the programme. We believe in doing this we increase the transparency of our statistics and allow users to use our data effectively.

This transparent reporting has provided significant value for understanding the Test and Trace operation and to improve it. In November 2020, the operation introduced an improvement whereby a case could inform their household contacts of the need to self-isolate, improving the contact tracing journey for these individuals. This caused the percentage of contacts reached to increase from 60% to 90%. Our team highlighted this operational change clearly in the release and made use of a dashed line in the tables and graphs to show the break in the series.

The DHSC Test and Trace statistics are a single point of contact for information on the Test and Trace programme. For every data source used, our team ensure the figures align with other published figures and outline any differences between published figures for users. This provides a clear evidence base for users and allows them to accurately compare between our statistics and others.

We published our Test and Trace statistics even over the Christmas period, upholding our commitment to publish these statistics in a timely manner for users. We add new data iteratively to provide users with the additional information they require and to reflect the ever-changing operation of Test and Trace.

Winner of the Award for Statistical Excellence in Trustworthiness, Quality and Value 2020 (previously Voluntary Application Award)

“72 people died in the Grenfell Tower Tragedy. Since then we have been collecting data on the materials on the outside of tall residential buildings to understand and estimate the number of buildings with dangerous materials on them and help evidence the government response. We have endeavoured to present these statistics in a way that is objective and transparent and in line with the Code of Practice so that the public, media and politicians understand the size of the problem that government faces and the progress we are making in remediating these buildings.

Everyone who has worked on this publication since it started has worked hard to ensure we adhere as much as we can to the Code of Practice whilst recognising that this is management information to support operational activity in the remediation of high rise buildings. This award recognises their efforts in helping to ensure we never have another tragedy like Grenfell.”

Paul Vickers, Head of the Building Safety Data and Analysis

Who are Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)?

Our job is to create great places to live and work, and to give more power to local people to shape what happens in their area. Our responsibilities include driving up housing supply, increasing home ownership, and devolving powers and budgets to boost local growth in England. We publish statistics relating to deprivation, housing and homelessness, local government finance, planning performance and land use.

Applying the Code

Our Building Safety Programme Monthly Data Release started in December 2017 – following the Grenfell Tower tragedy. It provides the public, stakeholders and Parliament with the latest data (management information) on identification, remediation and remediation funding of high-rise residential buildings with Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding – reassuring the public on progress and holding HMG and building owners to account in make buildings safe.

While Trustworthiness, Quality and Value (TQV) were core to our commitment to the Data Release from the start, we made a voluntary commitment to comply with the Code from April 2018.

As one of HMG’s early trailblazers on voluntary compliance, the Building Safety team have promoted the principles of TQV across the department, coaching others in voluntarily complying with the Code when full official statistics status is not possible.

Trustworthiness, Quality and Value

Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy there was considerable speculation about numbers of high-rise residential buildings with ACM cladding, and public and media concerns about certainty of estimates. Honesty and integrity are key principles to the monthly published Data Release which is managed by professional statisticians and overseen by the Department’s Statistics Head of Profession. As such, data governance is tightly controlled, with a clear published privacy notice explaining why data are collected, data sharing and the legal basis for processing data.

We have a transparent process for data collection, processing and publication. This process is clearly set out in the Release, and is labelled ‘Appendix 1’. From the outset, we have preannounced future publication dates; a marked change from the previous six months when statistics were released on an ad-hoc basis.

By producing a focussed Release, with pre-announced dates, we showed commitment to releasing regular statistics – demonstrating beyond doubt that we would publish statistics whatever they showed.

To ensure quality, our professional statisticians assess the suitability and quality of all data processes and sources used in the Release. Data originates from multiple sources. We have been working with providers from the outset to understand and improve data quality.

Two good examples are data on number of dwellings and data on remediation funding sources. These data were initially published with quality caveats, but work over the last six months with data providers has improved the quality considerably. This has communicated a message to these data providers about quality of building safety data.

Our approach to building safety data is used to drive forward progress on building remediation and to hold building owners, the construction sector, LAs and HMG to account. We have a long-term plan to increase data in the Release to build and communicate a clear evidence base.