Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg

I’m pleased to introduce a guest blog by Penny Babb from the Office for Statistics Regulation. The UK Statistics Authority is currently consulting on a revised version of the Code of Practice for statistics. The Code of Practice is the framework for the official statistics produced here in Wales as well as the rest of the UK.

As part of this revision the Authority are proposing that the Code provides principles that can apply to any numerical information so it is relevant to the wider data agenda. I’d very much encourage those with interest in data and statistics in Wales to respond.

Glyn Jones, Chief Statistician

Our code consultation is now up and running. Just to remind you – it is open until 5 October. We do hope you’ll take the opportunity to check out our consultation documents, including our draft Code 2.0.

It is an exciting moment for us in the Office for Statistics Regulation. It was only back in November that we adopted our new name – previously we were known as the Monitoring and Assessment Team in the UK Statistics Authority.  At that time we also published our exposure draft report with recommendations from our Code Stocktake. We now have a draft Code in which we have sought to incorporate much of the feedback shared by so many people over the previous year.

I guess the first thing that may strike you as you look at the draft Code is its name – Code of Practice for Statistics. This title is central to our ambitions for it to be a code that recommends good practice to all producers of statistics – and indeed to producers of other sorts of data and numbers. We think the main values of the code are relevant across the board and we want to encourage everyone with an interest in producing and using meaningful numbers to take a look at the code and seek to apply its principles.

On opening the code what may strike you next is that we have changed its structure – the new version of the code is founded on what we have called three pillars of trustworthiness, quality and value. It is quite a different way of thinking about statistical practices – we have certainly found that as we have applied this approach over the past couple of years in our regulatory work. But what it helps you do is get a better feel for why it matters to understand your data sources, or how it helps to engage with users, for example.

We hope that you will find this refreshed version of the code enables and encourages good practice. We are planning to provide additional guidance to support your understanding of our expectations as a regulator in applying the code. We  are also developing an interactive version of the Code for our website that we aiming to launch with the final version of the code, probably in early 2018.

We would love to receive your thoughts about the refreshed Code – please do complete a consultation response, by visiting: https://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/osr/code-of-practice/consultation/ . This is your chance to help shape the refreshed Code of Practice for Statistics.

Penny Babb

The Code Team, Office for Statistics Regulation