GSSRGC actions

This committee met for the first time on June 3^rd 2009. It is a successor to the GSS’s Regional and Geography Group, which had a unique position enabling external stakeholders such as ARO, the RDAs, the LGA and others to meet with GSS colleagues to discuss issues such as proposed work or changes to existing products.

The Committee has been reoriented to become more strategic and more focused on action and decision-making. This first meeting included discussion of the Committee’s terms of reference and membership; the principles of the National Statistics geography policy; and the coding and naming policy for statistical geographies.

There are a number of factors for ARO to consider after this first meeting.

1. The need for the Committee to become more decision-focused.

This imperative means that attendees from outside central government are side-lined, due to the fact that the Committee has no decision-making powers over their activities. This leads to the risk that user representatives become limited to “observer” status, or are de-invited.

2. The membership of the Committee

In trying to limit the number of attendees, GSS have reduced the number of external stakeholders while the number of government departments represented has, if anything, increased. This makes it more difficult to represent the user voice.

There is undoubtedly a risk that, if the Committee feels that external stakeholders either impede the ability to agree action, or are not relevant to discussions, ARO and other representatives will be asked not to attend, or asked to feed in via a sub-group. There is an important middle way for engagement with ONS (between the proactive user group, which is led by the priorities of users, and the formal consultation process) which could be lost.

It is suggested that:

• ARO Chair & RDA lead meet with Guy Goodwin / Judith Jones from ONS to express concern that the user voice not best served by the current set-up.

• ARO Chair to propose regular high-level engagement with ONS, modelled on the Producer-User Group (where the National Statistician meets with the Chair of the Statistics User Forum) with an ONS Colleague of appropriate level (Guy Goodwin?).

• ARO Chair to write to the UK Stats Authority’s Head of Assessment, Richard Alldritt, to raise the concern that regional users are not being heard, giving the particular example of the changes proposed to Supply-Use tables (where ONS have breached their Code of Practice for engaging with users, understanding their needs and consulting on any proposed changes). For background: Richard Alldritt was Chief Exec at the Stats Commission when Will Rossiter (as ARO Chair) wrote to complain that changes to the Blue Book (& regional GVA) were made without adequate consultation with regional users.

• ARO to reiterate commitment to working productively with ONS, including wishing to maintain involvement with the Committee, and in relevant sub-groups reporting to the Committee.