How the ONS data-sharing dream ended in budget cuts and three rival platforms

In 2020, the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS), which provides data vital to form public sector policy and allocate resources, launched a plan to integrate government data and provide "high quality analysis that reflects the diversity of economic and social experience in our country." Five years later, an independent …

[Taliesinawen]

Paper says UK economic data issues reflected defective methodology

Paper says UK economic data issues reflected defective methodology

The article at a glance: “Data that seriously distort Britain’s post-war economic history arose because the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) made errors that should have been easily spotted and adopted a highly defective methodology, says a new working paper written by Bill Martin, Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Business Research (CBR) at Cambridge Judge Business School.”

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Paper says UK economic data issues reflected defective methodology

Well, much more recently ONS have been in the dung for significantly inaccurate jobs data.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/23/ons-job-figures-labour-force-survey-data

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Paper says UK economic data issues reflected defective methodology

Like the also mishap prone US Bureau of Labor Statistics … culling budgets doesn’t help here. Simple deliverables to get hit right … … as £tn’s in tax spend and borrowed money over the coming decades relies on stats you have faith in that are correct.

[Like a badger]

About that five year action plan...

Some word counts, stub words to allow for different endings:

Inclusiv* 94

Sustainab* 53

Efficien* 35

Accountab* 11

Speed 1

Accurate* 1

So priorities were being inclusive and sustainable above being accurate, accountable even less so.....and accuracy or speed, pfff, what's that?

[Tron]

Govt x Tech = Fail.

Always interesting to see how these idiots have pissed away hundreds of millions of pounds that could have been better spent on education, healthcare and infrastructural resilience.

Big data is a lie. That is when used to direct policies or advertising. It doesn't give you magical insights into how to fix everything for a fiver, or triple your profits.

AI is a lie. It isn't really intelligent. It is an expensive security risk, resource hog and environmental nightmare. Implement it and you will just spend time checking it and correcting it.

Going digital is a lie. It doesn't save money or work well. It exposes everything to hackers, reducing the resilience of things best managed on paper. It creates a surveillance state, and makes it impossible for society to function without paying sacks of cash to foreign tech companies.

Can you see a pattern here?

[elsergiovolador]

Sunk

after £240M sunk

I am sure the yachts are anything but sunk.

Them wine and steaks must be out of this world.

[PeterM42]

".... ask how the government ended up with three different systems for doing just that."

Answer: GROSS INCOMPETENCE.