Summary of achievements to date: user engagement strategy for statistics

The Engagement Hub at ONS and colleagues from across the GSS have worked with others to improve engagement in several different areas. This section gives some examples of this work.

Cost of living

We listened and responded to public concern about cost of living measures, which involved hosting a wide-reaching public event in October 2022. This was part of a broad information, engagement and communications programme including webinars with communities and non-expert users to promote and explain our products and analysis.​ We also published our personal inflation calculator and the grocery price comparisons tool which have been popular with citizen users.

Household Cost Indices

We held three well attended events to promote and explain the new quarterly release of Household Cost Indices (HCIs) to target different audiences. HCIs reflect how different types of household experience inflation.

The first event was aimed at existing users of inflation statistics. It explained more about HCIs and how they can be used alongside other inflation measures such as the Consumer Prices Index.

The second event was an explainer session on ‘What is Inflation?’ for the citizen user. The explainer session was recorded so it could be shared more widely through different communications channels afterwards.

Finally, we held a technical session aimed at expert users of the data.

There were over 1,000 sign-ups across the three events.

The UK Measures of National Wellbeing

These were originally launched by the ONS in 2011 to provide an overview of progress in the UK. The ONS undertook a review of these measures between October 2022 and March 2023, which involved engaging widely with users, stakeholders and experts, as well as with public and minority groups. We:

• hosted a review launch event with over 180 stakeholders attending
• widely promoted a user feedback survey which received 120 responses
• surveyed the public on what matters most to them on wellbeing through the Opinions and Life Style Survey in October 2022
• facilitated focus groups with underrepresented groups likely to report low personal wellbeing in January 2023

In July 2023 we launched the revised UK Measures of Wellbeing dashboard along with a review report at a hybrid event in London which 400 people attended. We have established a public newsletter which audiences can subscribe to and be kept informed on our wellbeing releases. We continue to involve users and stakeholders and have plans to engage on a smaller set of wellbeing measures with a time-series.

The COVID-19 Infection Survey

The ONS built partnerships with others and developed the survey to provide information on COVID-19 infections and antibodies across the United Kingdom. The ONS embedded a colleague within the COVID-19 Taskforce in Cabinet Office to better understand the data needs from policy makers and ensure user needs were met effectively.

The ONS also adapted or introduced new surveys to meet data gaps and wider user needs. For example, the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey moved to collecting data more frequently and examined the effects of COVID-19 on daily life. This supported other work across government at this time to gather and disseminate data for the public good. An example of this was the COVID-19 in the UK dashboard which was instigated by Public Health England and is now being further developed by the UK Health Statistics Agency (UKHSA) as a wider public health data dashboard.

Cross-government health consultation

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), the Office for National Statistics (ONS), UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the NHS Business Services Authority and NHS England have worked together to launch the first cross government health consultation which ended on 9 March 2024. The consultation was supplemented with a webinar to give people the opportunity to discuss their ideas and will support a review of the current health statistical system to ensure outputs are valuable, efficient, and reflect current user needs.

User research at the Department for Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS)

DCMS conducted user research for all of their statistics in 2022 to help them:

• tailor their outputs in line with users’ needs
• better understand how their statistics are used

Redeveloping the StatsWales platform

The Welsh Government engaged with stakeholders to redevelop their StatsWales platform. They have also supported joint work across the UK on the comparability of health data and have worked with the ONS to extend the breadth of existing housing data, analysis and explainers, in response to emerging user needs.

The Engagement Hub at ONS and colleagues across the GSS have worked with others to improve capability in several areas. This section gives some examples of this work.

Census insights

In March 2023, we:

• ran explanatory ‘show and tells’ to accompany census releases
• produced a tailored guide to Census 2021 outputs to help less-expert users
• provided materials aimed at local authorities, community groups and charities to help them understand and use Census 2021 outputs and promote them onwards

These activities successfully broadened the accessibility of Census 2021 outputs to community groups.

Working with the third sector

We have been linking up ONS teams with third sector organisations to support engagement. For example, this includes:

• linking the social surveys team with the Royal Association for Deaf People (RAD) to support engagement with deaf people
• working with the GSS Harmonisation team to support engagement with disability charities to develop the Disability and Mental Health Standards

Mentoring and consultancy

We continue to provide advice and support on user engagement to our network of user engagement champions and to organisations from across the GSS. Recently this has included supporting the Manchester Analysts Community, which is a cross government community of over 600 government analysts based in greater Manchester, and supporting a range of organisations to facilitate stakeholder mapping exercises.

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)

DWP has co-hosted events such as the annual Family Finance Surveys User Conference and actively set up post-publication mop-ups and other regular meetings. These events give users the chance to interact with statisticians about publications.

Department for Business and Trade (DBT)

DBT recently ran a user-engagement session at their awayday. The session provided an opportunity to share ideas, highlight best practice and help embed user engagement in the development of their analytical products.

Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual)

Ofqual have been upskilling colleagues in ways to make statistical publications more accessible and user friendly.

Welsh Government

The Welsh Government engaged widely with colleagues within the organisation and others outside of their organisation to ensure that the needs of users across Wales were reflected in their response to the ONS consultation on the future of population and migration statistics. They have also worked within the Welsh Government’s Equality, Race and Disability Evidence to help develop ‘best practice guidance’ on how to engage with stakeholders with protected characteristics. This involved actively considering accessibility issues and the ethical implications of such engagement activity.

The Engagement Hub at ONS and colleagues from across the GSS have worked with others to strengthen our engagement culture in several areas. This section gives some examples of this work.

The Government Communications Service (GCS)

To promote a culture of curiosity and to highlight the value of close cross-profession working, we have developed and run training modules for GCS colleagues around communicating data and statistics. The training takes place every quarter and includes core messages around working across professional and organisational boundaries to draw on each other’s analytical and communications expertise as part of business as usual processes.

Reaching out to wider audiences

Our dedicated outreach and engagement team facilitate a range of regular webinars, focus groups, and round table events. These events provide opportunities to work with other colleagues and receive feedback from a wide range of audiences. We have introduced new initiatives across the ONS to help us reach new audiences. These include:

• releasing regular National Statistical blogs
• podcasts to highlight users understand statistical issues and themes
• explainer videos on statistics of interest such as migration, Census and Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Responding to users’ needs

In response to user demand for data at a local level, teams across ONS have recently worked together with other government departments to gather data to create a new service, called Explore Local Statistics. This will help users find and compare a range of different indicators from their local area.

Welsh Government

The Welsh Government has hosted regular engagement meetings with the:

• public sector, in the form of the Welsh Statistical Liaison Committee
• third sector, in the form of the Third Sector Statistics User Panel for Wales

In October 2022 they also established a new regular liaison group, called the Welsh Economic Statistic User Group. This group meets twice a year and is for people who are interested in economic and labour market statistics.

Welsh Government refreshed their User Engagement Strategy in November 2022.

Department for Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS)

DCMS held steering groups and consultations with stakeholders to ensure they captured user needs. An example of this is the Participation Survey Steering Group (PSSG).

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)

DWP has actively considered user needs in their plans for new and revised publications and have promoted the principles of their user engagement strategy across the department. In particular, the DWP statistical work programme is published in line with T4.2 of the Code of Practice for Statistics to ensure the DWP is open and transparent about progress towards meeting priorities and objectives, whilst ensuring users and stakeholders can help prioritise statistical plans. Release strategies are published to provide users with details of latest developments and to provide formal notice of changes to future releases.

Department for Business and Trade (DBT)

DBT ran a survey to establish a baseline of their user engagement activities. They have promoted successful case studies across the organisation and peer review their analysis outputs.

Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual)

Ofqual regularly consider user needs in their statistical publications by consulting on any major changes. They have also developed interactive visualisations to go out with some of their longer statistical publications to make the statistics more engaging, interactive and user friendly. Ofqual update their published user engagement strategy every year.