Our evidence to PACAC on data transparency and accountability during Covid-19
The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee is holding an inquiry into data transparency and accountability during Covid-19.
CFPD has submitted written evidence, based on research and a survey of organisations affected by data gaps during the response. You can read our evidence here (pdf) - and the summary and key recommendations are reproduced below.
Summary of our response
Government lacks data in many areas needed to understand the impact of the pandemic. We focus on its broader impact and find missing data in areas from court delays to NHS waiting lists, and in Government’s financial support schemes. This makes it hard for Government, Parliamentarians, researchers and citizens to assess the broader effect of policy interventions.
Failure by central government to share data has affected the local response. We highlight problems with local access to shielding lists, death projections and case numbers, despite well-established frameworks for health data sharing.
There have also been failures to share the data that has underpinned decision-making. We highlight data on local lockdowns and ICU statistics.
Systemic interventions will be needed to address these issues. This will include data-focussed updates to the UK’s policymaking processes to make them fit for the 21st century; new data-literate and independent institutions to enforce data quality and accountability; new provisions to support access to third-party data; and where appropriate, legislative changes.
Our recommendations
Gaps in statistical data, and OSR’s role
The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) is a statutory independent regulator to ensure that statistics are produced and disseminated in the public good . This includes relevant statistics being collected to meet the needs of the public. A previous report by the Committee has suggested that to meet its remit, OSR needs to fill data gaps and engage with a wider range of users.
We welcome OSR’s new guidance that when Ministers refer to management information publicly, it should be published. However, OSR remains primarily reactive rather than proactive in its interventions and its approach to data gaps. For example, to our knowledge, OSR has not intervened on the issue around ICU statistics that we identify above.
The OSR’s current strategy does not contain details of how it plans to engage a broader range of stakeholders, or of how it will change its practices to address the problems identified in the Committee’s previous inquiry.
To become more proactive in identifying issues, OSR will need more resources and potentially more powers. There is a corresponding need for continuing expert Parliamentary scrutiny to ensure those resources are well-used, and that the OSR carries out its independent regulatory role.
The equivalent role on the governance and reporting of operational data
The OSR’s remit is statistics. There is currently no equivalent institution to ensure that government data collection and sharing supports the public good
Some of the problems we highlight - such as failures to share details of shielding lists, or to report data from the financial support schemes - could have been addressed by early data-focussed interventions.
With relation to reporting performance data, the Government Digital Service’s (GDS) service standard requires new digital services to publish key performance indicators. However, in practice, GDS has struggled to enforce this.
The recent National Data Strategy states that the ONS and Cabinet Office will work together to create a Data Quality Framework for high-quality data, supported by a new unit at the ONS, the Government Data Quality Hub (DQH) . The remit for the DQH is not yet public. However, there is a need for an institution to support the collection, governance, and sharing of data to support the public good (as well as its technical quality) along the lines of the OSR’s remit for statistics.
Such an institution would need deep digital as well as data expertise, statutory independence, and a proactive approach. It would also need to make careful review of the need for permanent reforms to data practices, versus measures more appropriate for civil contingencies.
Controls over data generated by third parties
A number of the problems identified here relate to data generated by commercial contractors, including Pillar 2 testing and NHSTT data. We recommend updating Cabinet Office guidance to ensure that Government retains full control of analytic data when commissioning services from contractors.
We also recommend that the Freedom of Information Act should be extended to contractors providing public services, as recommended by the Campaign for Freedom of Information and many others.
We also recommend considering new general legislation that reporting data on all government spending (grants, loans, tax waivers and contracts) above a de minimis should be automatically published.
Embedding data in the policymaking process
Some of the problems we have identified were caused by a failure to capture basic performance data, such as NHS Test and Trace’s failure to report regional test availability.
We recommend that the Government’s formal policymaking guidance for civil servants should be updated for the digital age, to ensure that basic metrics are always defined when a new service is initiated.
These should include basic metrics on how well a service is meeting the needs of users and meeting its broader goals, broken down by protected characteristics to ensure compliance with the Equalities Act 2010. These metrics can then be captured from the outset.
Government should, as a matter of urgency, strengthen the guidance on capturing and reporting metrics in the Cabinet Office’s formal pre-legislative guidance for the Civil Service; the Government Digital Service’s guidance on collecting data; and the Treasury’s Magenta Book and other spending-related guidance.
Parliament’s role
Finally, the Committee may wish to explore how Parliament could take a data-focussed approach to examining draft legislation: for example, ensuring that Acts introducing significant new powers or policy changes (such as the Coronavirus Act) contain formal reporting duties.
Read the full written evidence here (PDF). Thanks very much to Peter Wells for advice and help with the response.
PACAC has also published all the evidence it received, including ours. We particularly recommend reading the evidence from:
the Royal Statistical Society, which includes recommendations for more powers for the statistical regulator (something we call for in our evidence too) and an independent review of England’s health data
Full Fact, on their experience fact-checking during the pandemic, and difficulty obtaining accurate information from government
the Greater London Authority, which clearly documents the issues that local government have had obtaining data
Sense about Science, surveying the many Covid-19 government policies published without accompanying evidence and data.
If you have thoughts on our evidence, we’d love to hear from you - please get in touch at contact@centreforpublicdata.org.