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8. Terms such as "official figures" and "official statistics" have been widely used without any consistency of meaning. This section defines what we mean by "official statistics".
9. The Statistics & Registration Service Act 2007 for the first time defines Official Statistics, as
(a) Statistics produced by the UK Statistics Authority, a government department, the Scottish Administration, a Welsh ministerial authority, a Northern Ireland department, or any other person acting on behalf of the Crown
(b) Such other statistics as may be specified by order by a Minister of the Crown, the Scottish Ministers, the Welsh Ministers, or a Northern Ireland department.
10. The Statistics & Registration Service Act 2007 does not define "statistics" but planned European statistical law 3 does - as "quantitative and qualitative aggregated and representative information characterising a collective phenomenon in considered populations." This definition is not particularly clear and it is to be hoped that the UK Statistics Authority will provide further guidance on what types of information should be included or not.
11. National Statistics are a subset of official statistics - see paragraphs 36 to 40.
12. In defining more precisely what we mean by Official Statistics we regard the most important considerations to be
(a) What range of statistics the government and other public sector bodies should produce and make publicly available.
(b) What quantitative information should be produced according to the standards, scrutiny, rules and procedures set out in the Statistics & Registration Service Act 2007.
(c) What quantitative information should be produced or managed by professionally competent statistical staff rather than others.
Official Statistics within central government
13. At present Official Statistics in Scotland consist mainly of regular and planned statistics and analysis produced by statistics units in the Scottish Government, GROS and ISD. 4
14. But this does not include the following information:
(a) Additional analysis produced by statisticians
- for use mainly within government to assist policy development and monitoring and to assist management decisions.
- for Parliamentary Questions, although many replies are based on Official Statistics and flagged up as such.
- in response to other user enquiries.
It is important that statisticians are able to produce such analysis to meet ad hoc internal and external user needs. Depending on the user requirement certain standards may vary considerably.
(b) Some data which are produced on a regular basis for operational management purposes within government. For example management sources may provide information on the health or education system before the Official Statistics are available. Where such data or similar data are also used to produce official statistics then the public interest is served. In other cases either the public interest and/or the management process may not be best served by classifying the data as Official Statistics although it remains subject to the Freedom of Information Acts.
15. Other parts of government produce quantitative information. However Official Statistics do not include
(a) Most financial data - as rigorous accounting and auditing procedures are in place.
(b) Quantitative information produced by government scientists and social researchers where alternative protocols for the production, quality assurance and publication of such information exists. This includes adoption of common standards with official statistics where appropriate.
(c) Quantitative information produced by economists and policy/administrative staff. Such information is likely to be equivalent to 14 (a) or (b) above.
16. Official Statistics also include any major recurring surveys managed by researchers in the Scottish Government primarily for statistical purposes. At present this is only the Scottish Crime & Justice Survey.
17. Further information on what is included and excluded is in Annex A. We will continue to produce a rolling programme of Scottish Official Statistics to be released over the coming year and make this available on the Statistics Scotland website:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/
18. It is recognised that the designation of Official Statistics needs to be done in a way which enables the UK Statistics Authority to exercise its statutory functions 5 in relation to "official statistics that serve the public good". The latter is defined in the Statistics & Registration Service Act 2007 to include not only informing the public about social and economic matters but also assisting in the development and evaluation of public policy.
19. We also recognise that the exclusion of certain types of government data may raise concerns.
20. Whenever significant analysis is produced on ad hoc basis by statisticians we will consider whether such outputs should be produced as Official Statistics in future. If the figures are going to be produced regularly or there is significant public need/demand for them the presumption is that they will be produced as Official Statistics in future.
21. We also recognise that our exclusion of ad hoc research surveys may be an issue and will review this decision if and when it becomes clear that the public or Parliament consider such information should be included as Official Statistics.
22. We will also regularly review the other types of quantitative information produced in each of the other categories above and where appropriate transfer it to official statistics production by statistical staff. These reviews will be made public.
Statistics produced by other public bodies
23. The Statistics & Registration Service Act 2007 allows Ministers to determine, by parliamentary Order, that statistics produced by other bodies are classified as Official Statistics.
24. In the first Order passed in March 2008 ISD were included within Official Statistics along with the Higher Education Statistics Agency and the Student Loans Company, all of which are established National Statistics producers.
25. Beyond that no arrangements are currently in place for other public sector bodies or local government to produce and publish outputs according to Official Statistics standards so they are excluded other than where the statistics are also collected, quality assured and published by Scottish Government statistics units. However discussions will be held on the possibility and desirability of extending the Official Statistics arrangements to these other bodies.
Concluding point on Official Statistics
26. Overall the most important safeguard is that there will be regular consultation on what is included in Official Statistics and this will involve highlighting any high profile quantitative information that is not included. As such the scope of our official Statistics will be subject to scrutiny by the public, Parliament and the UK Statistics Authority.
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