Ministers could find ways to boost the economy and improve public services by combining data from separate government departments, according to the head of Britain’s statistics watchdog.
Robert Choate, chairman of the UK Statistics Office, said government data was too often “siloed” because departments and other agencies were concerned that people would find weaknesses in the data or reach inconvenient conclusions.
He also warned that budget cuts and a decline in people’s willingness to respond to surveys were making it harder to collect official data.
But he said the “unrealised potential” of data sharing and linking could help governments generate new ideas and improve policies.
writing observer“During the pandemic, the sense of national emergency was an urgent driver for data sharing, which has provided valuable insights, including identifying where to target communications campaigns to increase vaccination rates,” Choate said.
“But since then, the system has not fully capitalized on similar opportunities, leaving many benefits untapped.”
Another example is the Linked Data Better Outcomes programme, which found that offenders with alcohol or drug problems were 10 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population in England and Wales.
Using data from the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government, they also found that faster access to treatment could reduce the number of deaths.
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The UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) is starting to collect more data from private companies to produce official statistics. This month it revealed it has started using anonymized data from supermarket scanners to check inflation, as well as collecting data on car and rail fares from private companies. AutoTrader and Railroad Distribution Group.
Similarly, the company uses anonymised Visa data to track credit and debit card spending to inform its travel and tourism research, and uses the latest PAYE data from HMRC to provide more accurate counts of employed people.
But these examples are still all too rare, Choate said, because too many departments and agencies worry about the downsides of sharing information, including risks to privacy and their agency’s reputation if “weaknesses in our data are revealed, or if the data is used to draw conclusions or narratives that are inconvenient for the agency or its leaders.”
Mr Choate also warned that the ONS and other data collectors were “under greater strain” due to tight budgets.
“Maintaining the quality of the household surveys we rely on to understand key parts of our economy and society is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive due to falling response rates and rising collection costs – a trend seen by other statistical agencies around the world,” he said.Last year, the ONS abruptly stopped publishing monthly employment data from its Labour Force Survey over concerns that low response rates meant the figures were unreliable.
The survey is used to estimate unemployment and employment data and forms part of the Bank of England’s interest rate decisions.
