Authority Diary - October 2008
Welcome to the second issue of Authority Diary, providing news and information about the work of the UK Statistics Authority each month.
The Chair of the Authority, Sir Michael Scholar, visited the Home Office on 28 October, accompanied by the National Statistician, Karen Dunnell, and met with the Permanent Secretary, Sir David Normington, chief statistician David Blunt, and Home Office statisticians to discuss the work of the Authority, the production of Home Office statistics, and other relevant issues. Sir Michael will also visit statisticians in the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on 31 October, and will begin the visit by meeting the Permanent Secretary, Helen Ghosh.
The Authority Board met on 23 October in Newport. The agenda was particularly full this month. At the meeting, the Board discussed emerging issues from the consultation on the Authority’s draft Code of Practice for official statistics, the initial programme for Assessments, progress on the Authority’s Monitoring Report on official statistics not currently designated as National Statistics, Census 2011, identifying and responding to user needs, features of the UK statistical system, and governance arrangements for the Authority’s scrutiny functions. The minutes and papers from the October Authority Board meeting will be published on the Authority website in due course. Minutes and papers of the September Board and previous meetings are published on the website on the Our Organisation pages.
The Authority’s Monitoring & Assessment team is still hard at work drawing together the responses from the Authority’s consultation on the draft Code of Practice and the principles and procedures for Assessment. The team will put a series of recommendations to the November meeting of the Authority Board, and it is expected the finalised Code of Practice will be published in early January 2009.
Alongside the finalised Code, the Authority expects to publish its 3rd report, and this will be the first of its Monitoring Reports. The Monitoring Report will consider those official statistics produced that are not currently included within the scope of National Statistics, otherwise known as “non-National Statistics”. The M&A team also published the first in a new series of Monitoring & Assessment Notes during October, discussing the volatility in the retail sales index and differences between published estimates of retail sales and analysts’ expectations. M&A Notes are available on the Authority’s website on the Monitoring & Assessment pages.
Correspondence between Sir Michael Scholar and the Scottish Government regarding pre-release access to statistics continued in October, and on 21 October the Authority published a press release setting out its latest position. The letters are published on the Correspondence pages of the Authority’s website, and the press release is available on the News pages.
If you have any questions about the work of the UK Statistics Authority, or have any comments or issues that you want to raise with us, email authority.enquiries@statistics.gov.uk or write to us at: Statistics House, Myddelton Street, London EC1R 1UW.
Next issue of Authority Diary: 30 November 2008
