Truths, Damn Truths, and Government Statistics

This month, Tom Scotto talks to OSR’s Gail Rankin and Mary Gregory about OSR’s work,  their roles as regulators and upcoming challenges to quality assuring statistics in the 2020s. 

Alex is the author of the recent book:  Official Statistics and the Welfare State: Measuring Poverty in Britain and West Germany (1970-2020) published by Transcript Verlag and available from online booksellers.  

Join us for this foray into critiquing the idea of “official statistics,” comparisons between government statistics produced in Germany and Great Britain, and the ideal that government employed statisticians are at arm’s length from politics! 

In this month’s episode, Professor Tom Scotto speaks to Roger Halliday, Scotland’s Chief Statistician about steps in place to protect the Government Statistical Service from politicalisation and the future of National Statistics.  They also gaze out into the 2020s and discuss government statistics in an era of big data. 

The Code of Practice for Statistics now is in its second version and sets standards for UK national and other statistics.  In this podcast, Tom Scotto talks to Sandy Stewart, a government statistician in the Scottish Government’s Office of the Chief Economic Advisor about how the code is a tool is part of the institutional framework put in place to build confidence in government and national statistics. 

Also discussed is how the code can be used by those outside of the UK Government who wish to produce quality and useful statistics. 

Many of the challenges thrown up by early 19th Century efforts at data collection remain relevant to us in an era of omnipresent data. In this inaugural podcast, Tom Scotto talks to Dr. Michela Hulme, a historian, and genealogist who utilizes the UK censuses of the 19th Century in her research.

Discussion focuses on challenges faced in initial data generation and collection efforts, early political controversies, and how these Victorian pioneers speak to current issues.