Response to the green paper Statistics: a matter of trust
(Cm 3882)

The Library Association is the Chartered professional body for librarians and information managers and represents some 26,000 members drawn from the whole spectrum of the economy - including business; industry; the health and voluntary sectors; central and local government and public library services.

Among the purposes of the Association set out in its Royal Charter are:

• To scrutinise any legislation affecting the provision of library and information services and to promote such further legislation as may be considered necessary to this end.
• To promote and encourage the maintenance of adequate and appropriate provision of library and information services of various kinds throughout the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.

We represent professionals who work in the whole range of Government and Agency library and information services. Many of our members are expert on official statistics and official publications (some of international standing) and the Association has taken the opportunity to consult with these members who work with official statistics on a daily basis, many of whom have years of relevant experience.

Green paper

The Library Association warmly welcomes the Government's green paper Statistics: a matter of trust (Cm 3882). The ideas and proposals contained within it will result in the type of reform that the Association has sought for some time. We agree wholeheartedly with the Government's desire to improve the reliability and reputation of published statistics and are very pleased to welcome the Government's statement of plans which place an emphasis on the need for government to communicate information and be accountable to the people of the United Kingdom. In short, the Association welcomes the green paper as an excellent reform and, subject to certain reservations, gives it the Library Association's wholehearted support.

The Association will deal with each of the questions posed in the green paper in turn but would at this stage express its disappointment at the lack of emphasis placed on the whole aspect of dissemination of official statistics and the right of the British public to have access to all those statistics published by the Government and which are in the public domain. At the beginning of our response we wish to affirm our belief that access to official statistics (at a reasonable cost) as a citizen's right needs to be established and become a wholly established part of the Government's strategy of administration.

The Background

The problem stems from the belief that has grown over the last twenty years that the Government is manipulating official statistics for political ends. This taint was increased because of the Rayner doctrine, which judged public access to be less important than making a business of information and also because of the concept of official statistics being an economic resource. We are in the unfortunate position now that today's correct practices are being undermined by "history": a history of political use of statistics which has increased mistrust. Therefore, an additional reason for change is that most people don't know that the government is making a fresh start and so the more thorough the change, then the better and more successful it will be.

Official statistics are an unseen factual audit or a dispassionate statement of the government's performance. They have to be seen to be produced by an organisation that has no interest in putting a spin on them and so the further that the statistical service can be distanced from government the better. We would like to suggest that perhaps the Government might set up the statistical service so that it would be analogous to the staff of the National Audit Office who, although responsible to Parliament, are seen to be independent.

What statistics should be included

Most of the present output should be included. There are other datasets that could be within the scope of 'national statistics':

• School League Tables (These are published because the government wants them published and therefore they should be published as part of the national statistical output. They should be within the province of an independent statistics service
• Hospital League tables should also be within the province of an independent statistical service but problems arise because of the way in which they are published by DoH.
• Hospital tables as a whole need to be reviewed and published by the GSS
• BSE statistics
• Local Authority figures, produced by public auditor
• Local Authority figures, produced by the authority concerned
• Local Authority figures, at the district level
• Local Authority figures, produced by CIPFA
• Any figure collected for an authority by an official body
•  

The nationality of the statistics is a cause of concern.

Since the early 1980s there has been a trend toward the regionalisation of official statistics. For instance, statistics pertaining to Wales have been produced, published and distributed by the Welsh Office. The effect is that only the very largest libraries have UK-wide coverage and in many only cover English statistics.

The National Statistics Service ought to be producing UK statistics and this should not just reunite the English ones with those from Scotland and Wales but should also include statistics from areas previously published independently like Ulster, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. Once UK statistics are available that cover every centimetre of the UK, then they can be disaggregated into national datasets.

It is probable that once the new regional assemblies for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have been created then these authorities will wish to produced and publish statistical information. It is important that all citizens of the UK should have an easy means of accessing these statistical sets and they should not be reserved for the region that they describe. This suggests that there is a big role for the National Statistical Service in co-ordinating access to and information about the statistics produced by all levels of government in the UK.

Paragraph 2 on page 32 says that a co-ordinated World-Wide Web site for official statistics is being developed. We welcome this initiative and hope that it will be given a high priority.

Paragraph 4.5 declares that the "listing of statistics of public interest will change over time". We would ask the government to remember that the Government's perception of the public's interest is never the same as 'public interest'. · The release dates for official statistics are a public confidence issue. There needs to be a greater awareness of the published schedule of release dates for official statistics.

Accountability

After brief consideration of the 4 proposed models:

1. We believe this suggestion does not go far enough and the public would not realise that any changes had been made. Public recognition of change is an element we believe to be very important
2. The Green paper itself does not appear to be enthusiastic about this proposal. This would appear to be something of a compromise between proposals and is the least appealing
3. This is our favoured proposal. This Commission would be visibly independent. The emphasis of the Commission would be on the wider community of users and this is the approach we judge to be the most appropriate. The fact that it would be easier to create than other proposals also works in favour of the independent Commission.
4. This proposal is probably a little unrealistic. Above we have asked for a body analogous to National Audit Office but this proposal goes further. Some of the proposals under D are very attractive like, for example, responsibility to Parliament. Perhaps as a compromise we could suggest that the head might have the same sort of powers as the Parliamentary Commissioner for Legislation and the same sort of accountability.

We would urge the Government to beware of the uncharted waters that we will enter following the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. The last thing we want are parallel Scottish and Welsh statistical bodies.

Location of responsibilities

Some response to the question of location of responsibilities is perhaps already covered in the several points we have raised about Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We would make just two points that indicate the type of problem that can emerge:

1. Firstly definition is (and always will be) a problem. There is no easy way around this but we are certain the government is very well aware that (for instance) the definition of "crime" varies between England and Scotland. This is obviously the result of differing legislative and judicial systems but it is still a cause for concern and offers a significant role for the National Statistical Service in co-ordinating statistical information
2. Secondly, there can be a wide diversity of information produced when statistics are the shared responsibility of more than one Department. The example we have in mind here is "road deaths" where the Department of Transport definition produces fewer deaths that the OPCS Mortality by cause figures. Again a co-ordinatory roles for the National Statistical Service would be of great benefit.

Maintenance of professional standards

One issue about professional standards that does not appear in the document relates to the statistical Web pages produced by the National Statistical Service or by Government departments. Here we would urge the statistical services to ensure that Web pages are controlled by statisticians or information professionals (and not by graphic designers) to ensure that through this very important medium statistical standards do not slip.

1. Pages should be updated regularly (at least monthly) and the date of update posted in a conspicuous position
2. Superseded figures should be archived and the archives should remain permanently available
3. All statistical pages should state clearly where the information comes from and where the information is published in full.
4. Sample sizes, populations and methodologies should be included with all tables
5. A range of formats (e.g. Excel or Lotus) should be offered on all sites
6. Illustrative graphs and commentary should be provided separately from the raw data
7. Contents and/ or index pages should be produced for the larger sites

Through all this the Government should remember that access to statistical information on the Web is not easy and that some statistics are much better suited to publication on paper. Similarly the Government should remember that the same high standards of publication are just as appropriate for Web sites as they are for paper publications.

Statistics and Devolution

In the points raised above, we have addressed some of our concerns about the results of devolution on the dissemination of National Statistics for the United Kingdom. To summarise:

• UK-wide rather than sub-national statistics need to be available for all topics
• Statistics for the autonomous countries of the UK need to be readily available in all the other areas of the UK
• Parallel Scottish, Northern Irish or Welsh statistical bodies should not be established
• Differing definitions that exist (say) in England and Wales should be examined and reduced

Annexes

We congratulate the Government on its excellent summary of the changes in the dissemination of official statistics in Annex A.

Annex B is another excellent and extremely worthwhile statement. To our knowledge, there is no other public document that has laid out so lucidly the process through which official statistics are produced and published

Some reservations

The Library Association regrets that the dissemination of official statistics was not considered separately in this document. Paragraph 1.6 (ii) can be read as a "catch-all" that includes consideration of dissemination and access issues.

Some of the particular aspects of information dissemination that cause concern are detailed below:

• Printed compendia of statistics are still of great value to the information community and to the general publication. Electronic access is of great value to specialists who need correct information rapidly. Both formats must be maintained; one should not have a priority over the other. Both serve a purpose in disseminating information but often to distinctly different user groups. Within the information professions, there is a concept of "information rich: information poor"; largely this relates to the individual's ability to afford information but it is also relevant when considering the information skills and information technology that individuals have at their disposal. We urge the Government to do all it can to eradicate information poverty.
• If the government is going to rely on electronic information as its principal mode of dissemination or if this is going to be the method where cost-free information is published, then the Government needs to ensure that public libraries and national libraries are given sufficient state money to enable them to carry out their function of providing access to official information to every citizen.
• With electronic publications it is relatively easy to correct or update statistics. If the Web is the only way that these corrections are going to be published then this need to be made clear and the addresses of these sites needs to be widely publicised.
• Many statistical series are published as Parliamentary papers and other statistical information is published as Parliamentary answers. A large amount of statistical information is published through Press Releases. The National Statistical Service needs to give some thought as to how such information can be made more generally available.
• The now discredited Rayner doctrine held that it was important for the government to make a business of selling its own information. Although it is possible to deduce a statement from this green paper, a clear statement of the Government's role as an information trader would be welcomed
• Whilst the Government may wish to be involved in selling statistical information or it may deem it appropriate to work in partnership with the private sector, it should never again sell official statistics to a 'monopoly' supplier as was done with the 'UK Markets' database.
• When it works in partnership with the private sector in order to sell official statistics, each partnership should make clear how the product adds value to the information and why it has been placed in the private sector.
• The government's statistical pricing policy needs to be developed and published.
• A discounting system for public libraries and for other libraries in the public sector needs to be evolved to ensure equal access to government information.
• The government needs to develop plans for electronic statistical information to be permanently archived. A strategy for placing this information in the country's copyright libraries needs to be developed and a complete national archive should be constructed.

The Library Association, May 1998