A team in the Office for National Statistics has won this year’s Campion Award for Excellence in Official Statistics for its efforts to make local data more widely available.
The ONS Explore Subnational Statistics team has won the annual prize, which is awarded by the Royal Statistical Society in partnership with the UK Statistics Authority and Civil Service World. The award is named in honour of Sir Harry Campion, the first director of the Central Statistical Office – which is the forerunner to the ONS.
The judges praised the team’s work developing the Explore Local Statistics service, a new section on the ONS website that enables users to “find, analyse, visualise and compare” subnational data.
The website gives users access to 57 local indicators across topics including health, education and the economy. Users can, for example, compare data in their local area on housing net additions per 1,000 dwellings to other parts of the country.
The award judges said the project had “considerably improved the availability and access to local data in the UK”.
The project has “real potential to empower local areas, providing them with the data they need to make the right decisions”, the panel said.
UK Statistics Authority chair Sir Robert Chote said the service “makes people’s local area data easily accessible, embodying the spirit of statistics for the public good”.
“In recent years, one of the most common requests from users has been greater granularity of data for research and policymaking, and this year’s winner recognises the statistical system’s response to that call,” he added.
The judges also highly commended two collaborative projects.
One of these, an ONS-Home Office-DLUHC joint cohort study on refugee integration outcomes, linked Home Office refugee data to the 2021 census.
The study helped to answer questions such as how many refugees are able to find employment, where they choose to live and what services they are using. The panel said the project was “an excellent example of linking data from different departments and cross-team working to answer multiple-department policy questions”.
They also praised the “innovative methods” the officials used to meet “a clear user need”.
The other highly commended project, led by the ONS’s health and social care methodology team, was the creation of a new methodology for estimating excess mortality in the UK. The judges applauded the team for using “world-leading methodology… to tackle a controversial topic”.
The work was conducted in collaboration with the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, the UK Health and Security Agency, the Welsh Government and other organisations.
The judges also praised the team for agreeing a UK-wide approach to excess mortality estimates for the first time, which means the data is now comparable and consistent. The judges said the new methodology “has the potential to set the international standard for this topic”.
Commenting on the winners, Campion Award committee chair Dev Virdee said: “This year’s winners have taken real-life issues and problems and provided the answers we need so that better policy decisions can be made. Congratulations to the teams for their excellent work.”
Another winner last night was the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which received the Award for Statistical Excellence in Trustworthiness, Quality and Value. The prize, which is awarded by the Office for Statistics Regulation in partnership with the RSS and CSW, was awarded to HFEA for launching its fertility data dashboard, which is believed to be the first of its kind, earlier this year.
Peter Thompson, chief executive of the HFEA, said: "We’re delighted that the HFEA dashboard has won this year’s Trustworthiness, Quality and Value award. This award is a real tribute to the quality of work of our expert team at the HFEA and a recognition of the huge interest in UK fertility data."
The OSR also highly commended the UKHSA for its UKHSA data dashboard, which built on the success of the award-winning Covid-19 Dashboard.