Year in, year out, the Office for National Statistics issues hundreds of publications that paint a detailed picture of our society and economy. Whether births and deaths, migration or GDP, ONS statistics are not abstract numbers – they are trusted to inform the public and underpin crucial decisions that affect everyone’s lives.
It is now fast approaching 12 months since I took up my post leading the ONS. It has been a challenging, rewarding and, I think, genuinely significant year; one in which our recovery is well underway, putting this organisation on a much stronger footing for the years ahead. Last year’s review of the organisation and its culture laid bare the challenges we have faced. We needed to reestablish a positive organisational culture with an emphasis on improving performance. This scrutiny led us to confront some harsh realities, take difficult decisions and embark on substantial change.
Our guiding principle has been a focus on quality over quantity, acknowledging that the ONS had become overstretched, taking on too much. Narrowing our portfolio has enabled us to reallocate resources to our most vital statistics and improvement activity.
This focus on our fundamentals is bringing real progress. We have transformed international migration statistics; recovered responses to our Labour Force Survey to broadly in line with pre-pandemic levels; reinstated producer price statistics; made our business survey collection fully digital and have been accredited by the IMF as meeting their highest tier of data dissemination standards. Last month, our research and development statistics were reaccredited by the Office for Statistics Regulation, recognising work to improve their coverage. These may sound like technical changes, but their significance is fundamental: better data, more reliably produced, informing better decisions.
Innovation is also central to improving quality and in March we published our first prices output using grocery scanner data: a genuine step change in how we measure inflation, giving us a more accurate and detailed picture of what people are buying and how prices are changing. We’ve gone further by being one of the first national statistics institutes to use generative AI in producing official statistics, with our in-house ClassifAI now coding labour market data, while a large language model has halved processing time for occupation coding in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.
While Census 2031 may sound a way off, planning is well underway. Our census strategy, published earlier this year, sets out how we will deliver a digital-first census that makes the best use of administrative data and modern technology, whilst ensuring participation for those who are digitally excluded.
Underpinning all of this is creating an organisational culture that repairs the trust and accountability that has been missing in recent years. Over the last year, a key focus of mine has been to restore the sense of pride in working at the ONS and to ensure staff can trust the senior leadership to deliver. This effort has seen us resolve our hybrid working dispute with the trade unions; strengthen our executive team; and launch a new mission statement and leadership commitment. These changes are already bearing fruit, with a recent staff survey showing improvements in sentiment and indicating an increase in the number of staff that would recommend the ONS as a great place to work.
It was encouraging to hear that our determined progress on rebuilding culture and improving our core statistics was recognised at the UK Statistics Authority Reception last week. Both Penny Young, Interim Chair of the Authority, and Professor Denise Lievesley highlighted our increased openness and the “excellent work in addressing data quality”.
Despite the substantial progress we’re making, I recognise we have further challenges to work through. Complex manual processes, legacy technology constraints, and gaps in capacity have slowed the pace of some of our improvement work. We will also continue to confront issues candidly, learning from errors and strengthening our systems, processes and skills. Recovery is not a straight line, and I think it is important to say that plainly.
Three strategic outcomes articulate what success will look like by 2029: improved quality and trustworthiness in what we publish; statistics that are timely and relevant to society and decision makers; and an organisation that is efficient, resilient and adaptable. Our Business Plan, published in May, sets out our approach towards achieving these outcomes through sustainable progress over the next three years. It is intentionally structured, disciplined and transparent – reporting progress openly and regularly, including where milestones change – to ensure that resources, risk and benefits remain balanced. For example, our new ‘waiting room’ model helps us to sequence complex change so that improvements are only delivered when we can fully resource them. We will continue working in this open way, strengthening engagement with users and inviting feedback to inform priorities.
I am under no illusion about the scale of the task ahead: but I am highly encouraged by the progress we have made this year, and by the commitment and professionalism of the people across the ONS who are making it happen. The nation deserves statistics it can rely on. That is what we are here to deliver.