Case Study 10

Case Study 10: Openness versus Orderliness

SCENARIO

ONS which incorporates in one of its market-sensitive releases a set of administrative figures from a second Department was informed by the latter that their contributory figures had been discovered to be unreliable because of large-scale administrative fraud. The  second Department was unable to quantify the error although it was apparent to both organisations that the ONS´s already-published market-sensitive figures would have to be substantially revised.

Furthermore, any quantification of the likely revisions to ONS´s already published figures would depend on the second organisation´s fraud enquiries which were themselves sensitive and confidential.

If you were the Director in charge of the ONS release, how would you handle the process of notifying stakeholders and users of the requirement to publish revised figures in due course? Would you:

• inform no-one ?
• inform some - e.g. only Government users ?
• inform all users equally ?

QUESTION

Which principles and protocols of the Code of Practice are relevant to this scenario?

SUGGESTED RELEVANT PRINCIPLES

In this case, the following principles are relevant :

Code of Practice

• Integrity
• Quality
• Accessibility

SUGGESTED RELEVANT PROTOCOLS

The following protocols might be considered to be the most relevant to this scenario:

• Professional Competence
  using professional judgement
• Release Practices 
  Introduction  - for market sensitive statistics the process of release of revisions must not itself create uncertainty
  Principle 1 - National Statistics will promote equality of access
  Principle 5 - Release arrangements will be open and pre-announced
• Revisions
  Principle 4 - Revisions will be released in compliance with the same principles as other new information ( i.e. as per Protocol on Release Practices).
  (however,and again):
  For market sensitive statistics the process of release of revisions must not itself create uncertainty.
  Principle 7 - Revisions .... will be released in an open and transparent manner

QUESTION

What recommendations do you have?  In what way does the Code of Practice influence your recommendations?

SUGGESTED RECOMMENDATIONS

The ONS decided, at the time and in the circumstances, to notify only government users about the need to issue revisions at some point in the future. Non-government users were not informed until the scale of the revisions became known.

The Statistics Commission came to the conclusion, subsequently, that ONS should have notified everyone equally about the impending revisions, without favour.

ONS defended its actions on the grounds that the market-sensitive principle took precedence over the equality of access principle. ONS also justified its actions on the grounds that any public announcement of impending revisions would have to include a public explanation - an action that might have compromised the separate enquiry into administrative fraud.

 Case study as word document