Blog

What is the value of our statistics?

We now live in a world awash with data and people can look up almost anything they want. But what gives “official” data its unique competitive edge? The data we produce at Office for National Statistics (ONS) is underpinned by the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and the UK’s Code of Practice for Statistics. This […]

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It’s a kind of magic…

The Connected Open Government Statistics (COGS) project will do some amazing things to bring data together from across the GSS. But the project doesn’t have magical fairies that sprinkle Python dust over all the spreadsheets to transform them into Tidy Data. To take our existing outputs and make them 5* Linked Open Data takes a […]

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Don’t Stop Believin’

The Connected Open Government Statistics (COGS), GSS Data project in old money, has started its new ‘Journey’ this month and we wanted to update on what has happened and what we are doing over the next few months. We fought hard over the Summer to ensure the project continues and, although it was tough we’ve […]

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A new ‘What’s New’

Novel changes to the Presentation and Dissemination Committee's 'What's New' report are described by a cross-departmental working group.

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Celebrating success at the GSS awards 2019

The awards ceremony for the first annual GSS awards took place at the GSS conference in Edinburgh on Tuesday 1 October. Presented by Deputy National Statistician Iain Bell, the awards celebrated the excellent work being done across the GSS. This was the first GSS conference held in Scotland and to celebrate attendees were led into […]

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How we listened to users to improve housing and planning statistics

Housing statistics are central to government and are developed across many government departments as well as the devolved administrations. The statistics are used for developing policy on topics such as social housing stock, homelessness and housebuilding. They are very important and have far reaching impacts. In 2017, the Office for Statistics Regulation published a cross-government […]

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Quality Street

Does anyone like coffee creams? I for one didn’t shed a tear when they were banished from the selection a few years ago, but the existence of a ‘bring back the coffee cream’ Facebook group suggests that they did have a small but loyal fan base. Could it just be that it’s a matter of […]

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The Code of Practice for Statistics turns one today

I am pleased to be saying happy first birthday to the Code of Practice for Statistics.  Over the last 12 months I have been involved in many different conversations about the use of statistics and I have found the new code to be really helpful in supporting these. As the statistical Head of Profession in […]

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Collaborating with experts to explore advancements in privacy and data confidentiality methods

Today, the Quality Centre in the Best Practice and Impact Division published the National Statistician’s Quality Review (NSQR) of Privacy and Data Confidentiality Methods to support producers of statistics to think strategically about the methods needed to keep pace with changing data sources and technologies. This NSQR outlines the challenges faced and sets out the steps […]

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GangStaS Data RAP

A view point on how initiatives happening across the GSS can do great things together but it’s also a lesson that we need to do better in raising awareness of the things we are doing.

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