NATIONAL STATISTICS BOARD

Venue: Department of the Taoiseach, Room 308, Government Buildings, D02 R583

Date: Wednesday June 16, 2022 at 10.00am

Agenda

National Statistics Board

Minutes

The meeting took place in Government Buildings and was a hybrid meeting.

Date:     Thursday 16th June 2022

Members present: Ms. Anne Vaughan (Chairperson), Ms. Eithne Fitzgerald, Dr. Eimear Cotter, Mr. Gerard Brady, Mr. John McCarthy, Mr. John Shaw and Mr. Pádraig Dalton.

Apologies: Mr. John Martin

Non-members in attendance:  Mr. Paul Morrin (CSO Senior Management) and Ms. Claire Hanley (Secretary). Jenny Connors, Ben Breen and Cathal McDermott (Department of Public Expenditure and Reform) attended for item 4. Maria Hurley and Rebecca Fitzgerald-Smith (CSO) attended for item 5.

Item 1:  Minutes of NSB meeting April 27, 2022 (NSB 2022-3-2)

The minutes of the previous meeting were agreed.

Item 2: CSO Director General’s Report to NSB (NSB 2022-3-3)

Item 3:  NSB Strategy – review of progress on recommendations (NSB 2022-3-4)

Items 2 and 3 were taken together. CSOs Director General, Pádraig Dalton, briefed the Board on a number of recent strategic developments relating to the priorities and actions set out in the NSBs Strategic Priorities for Official Statistics 2021-2026. The Board reviewed progress of the priorities and actions recommended in their strategy over the last year and felt that good progress had been made at a general level. Some issues were discussed further, these included:

• Environment and Energy: The Board welcomed the ongoing work at CSO regarding the possibility of adding variables from the SEAI Building Energy Ratings file to the SILC research microdata file to facilitate research on energy poverty determinants. There is a lot of work and focus on waste statistics coming from EU Regulations and this is impacting on resources in the area. Opportunities arising from the data being received e.g. Eircode on BER certs, need adequate resources to be developed fully.
• CSO staying relevant: The Board welcomed recent outputs including Information and Communications Technology: A Value Chain Analysis 2019^[1]; Estimated Inflation by Household Characteristics^[2]; Frontier Series report on business survival^[3]; and the Wellbeing Hub. These outputs play a key role in ensuring CSO maintains its relevancy. A number of these projects are carried out using existing resources at CSO and this is becoming an issue. There needs to be a more appropriate match between the importance of data for policy and the resources allocated to producing the data.
• Health data: The Board welcomed the the progress by the Department of Health on the Health Information Bill which will enable the use of the PPSN as the primary health identifier.
• Vacant Housing: The Board noted the increased focus on vacant housing data ahead of the preliminary Census results due to be published on 23^rd June 2022.
• Statement of Confidentiality: The Board suggested an amendment to the Statement of Confidentiality of Data on the CSO website to outline further the independence of the CSO.
• General Data Protection Regulation: The Board noted the improvement in relation to issues around the application of GDPR by administrative data custodians. This is an ongoing challenge and one in which the CSO invests a lot of resources.
• National Data Infrastructure Champions Group: The Board discussed the value added by the NDI Champions in the context of building relationships within PSBs and increasing the uptake on Eircode capture, including a push to webservices incorporating Eircode collection and highlighting the importance of the Eircode for geographic breakdown.
• Eircode as a public good: The Board were updated on the work at the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications in relation to progressing the Eircode as a public good and therefore making it freely available.
• Irish Statistical System Code of Practice: The Board welcomed the progress made in recent ISSCoP certifications and asked about large data holding departments such as the Department of Social Protection. The need for adequate statistical resources in the host organisation is critical to the success of the ISSCoP process.
• Data architecture: The Board asked about progress in relation to the rollout of standardisation of data definitions and classifications. The CSO are taking all opportunities to progress this work e.g. Ukrainian data providers. The resources available at CSO are limited in this area and need to be developed in conjunction with building the capacity across the system.
• European Statistical Systems (ESS) Peer Review on compliance with the European Statistics Code of Practice: The report from the peer review team is due for publication in the coming weeks and will be sent to the Board once published. The Board suggested that the CSO reiterate the message of trust and independence in the press statement accompanying the publication.
• AI and Machine Learning: CSO statisticians are currently working on AI and are engaging with the UK Office of National Statistics to learn how other countries are using AI. It is particularly useful in the area of environment statistics.
• Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency: The CSO continues to engage closely with NISRA, particularly around trade statistics.
• Staffing and building capacity: The Board discussed the ongoing challenge of staffing and staff retention. There are difficulties in attracting staff to fill existing vacancies and also with loosing staff to other data analyst posts in the public sector e.g. IGEES. An equally important challenge is building the capacity of staff throughout the Irish Statistical System to meet the demand for data; a number of current projects are being carried out by statisticians on top of their ‘day jobs’.
• CSO presentations to management groups: Communication of CSOs Data Steward role and funding needs began in March 2022 with a presentation to members of the CSMB in March followed by a dedicated CSMB session in May which resulted in agreement on a CSMB sponsored group. The presentation, aimed at raising awareness of CSOs Data Steward role and the services available, has also been made to other groups with a dedicated session at Assistant Sec level planned for June and a ‘Data Day’ planned for the autumn. The Board offered their assistance in supporting the CSOs case for funding in the 2023 estimates campaign. The CSO feels that the NSB strategy will form a key part of the business plan to be submitted by end-July.
• Data Act and Data Governance Act: The Board were updated on the European Data Act and Data Governance Act. The Council Working Party on Statistics are working towards the development of a proposal to access private data at European level and are therefore trying to ensure that the Data Act doesn’t inhibit this opportunity.

Item 4: Data for Policy Analysis – Department of Public Expenditure & Reform (NSB 2022-3-6)

Jenny Connors, Ben Breen and Cathal McDermott (Department of Public Expenditure and Reform) made a presentation on Data for Policy Analysis which included the work of the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES) and its collaboration with the Irish Government Statistical Service (IGSS). The presentation illustrated the way data is used for evidence-based policy making, particularly in areas such as the labour market; it highlighted the importance of data in forming and improving policy; it outlined the need for expanding data in expenditure areas, climate, housing etc. and the importance of linking data to facilitate this expansion; it also underlined the value of timeliness of data when an immediate response is necessary e.g. COVID-19 and the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

The Board discussed the challenge of capacity building and staff retention, given that the demand for staff continues to grow. The importance of building the capacity of government departments to absorb the disseminated information was raised as well as the onus on the output providers to disseminate clearly, using tools such as infographics etc. The question of a reactive versus strategic approach was discussed and highlighted the importance of building the evidence base to support the reactive function of IGEES. The Board feels that a strategic vision for the broader statistical system is needed and said further discussion is required in the context of the data ecosystem, the roles of the various stakeholders and the collaboration required to achieve this vision.

Item 5:  Update on the results of CSO’s User and non-User Surveys (NSB 2022-3-5)

Maria Hurley and Rebecca Fitzgerald-Smith (CSO) presented the results of the recent CSO User and non-User Surveys. It should be noted that due to the different approach used for the 2022 surveys, the results should not be compared directly with the 2017 results. The key insights of both surveys were presented along with plans for changes to the CSO website, including a new release format.

The Board welcomed the results of the survey and discussed issues such as recruiting users via social media; addressing the challenge of users and non-users who put secondary data sources ahead of CSO as a primary source of information; targeting the student community to opt for CSO as their primary source; the locational breakdown of users; improvements to PxStat; and the high Net Promoters Score (NPS) score.

Item 6:  Any other business

The next meeting of the Board will take place on September 15, 2022 at the CSO office in Swords and this will include a tour of Census operations.

Item 7:  Private discussion

A discussion took place for non-CSO Board members.

[1] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/fp/fp-ictvca/informationandcommunicationstechnologyavaluechainanalysis2019/

[2] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/frp/frp-eihc/estimatedinflationbyhouseholdcharacteristicsmarch2022/

[3] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/fp/fp-bslss/businesssignsoflifeseriestwobusinesssurvival2020to2021/