Joint UNECE / Eurostat meeting on Population and Housing Censuses

7-9 July 2010, Geneva

Disseminating Census information to maximise use and value

Keith Dugmore

Demographic Decisions

Themes

• Statistics for the public good

• The costs of collecting, and disseminating, information

• Supply – the range of potential statistical products

• Marketing the Census – identifying market segments

• Maximising use and value – by seeking a better balance between risk

and utility

• Maximising use and value – a wider manifesto

Introduction – Statistics for the public good

• “Only used statistics are useful statistics”

• A user’s view based on UK experience – 3 Census Offices

• Statistics Act 2007, & its Code of Practice– “Statistics that serve the public good”– Code of Practice, Principle 1: Meeting User Needs– “The production, management and dissemination of official statistics should meet

the requirements of informed decision-making by government, public services, business, researchers and the public.”

• Current political context– Positive: Making Public Data Public - www.data.gov.uk – Negative: Threat of cuts to the Census budget

The cost of disseminating information – as a % of the total Census budget, 2001

2001 Census costs (1993-2006) England & Wales

Cost (£millions) (%)Policy, Content & Publicity 24 12Support Services 13 6Geography 7 3Data Collection 84 42Data Capture & Processing 61 29Downstream Processing & IT 11 5Output Policy & Production 7 3Total 207 100

Source: 2001 General Report

# # #

The range of potential statistical products

1. Resident population tables

2. Resident population area classifications

3. Workplace population tables

4. Origin / Destination tables

5. Commissioned special tables

6. Flexible table generation

7. Microdata files

Plus:– Digital boundaries for Output Areas– Postcode / Output Area directory

Marketing the Census – identifying market segments:a) Sectors

Plus:– The general public– Value Added Resellers (Census Offices can learn much from them)

Market sectors – some example case studies of the use made of the 2001 Census

Government – National • Commission for Rural Communities – Deprivation in rural areas • Department for Transport – Accessibility Indicators for local transport planning Government – Local • Newport City Council – Community Development – evaluating funding and outcomes • Suffolk County Council – Rural Enterprise Scheme Health Service • UCL & Department of Health – Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England • Yorkshire & Humberside Public Health Laboratory – Use of a range of neighbourhood

geodemographic classifications Academic • Newcastle University – Defining local labour markets, and other functional regions, for

government policy purposes Commercial • NOP – Optimising survey and sample design • Sainsbury’s supermarkets – Planning of store investments and developing network strategy Charity • Carers UK – Developing improved policies for combining work and care

C. Occasional & New Users

B. Mainstream Analysts

A. Census Specialists

Numbers of users, and

their expertise

Marketing the Census – identifying market segments:

b) User segments – knowledge, and time available

Maximising use and value (1) – by seeking a better balance between risk and utility

• The Census White Paper rightly puts a strong emphasis on the importance of statistical confidentiality, and outlines several measures to ensure disclosure control “that is, to prevent the release of statistical information that identifies characteristics about an individual person or household.”

• ONS has sought to establish the extent to which data can be damaged without rendering it useless…….

• “The utility of microdata that has undergone Statistical Disclosure Limitation methods is based on whether statistical inference can be carried out and the same analysis and conclusions drawn on the perturbed data to the original data.”

ONS: Seeking the best balance between disclosure risk and data utility

But there’s also practical utility / value……

"That property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness…….It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.”

1789: Jeremy Bentham Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

“Ensure that arrangements for confidentiality are sufficient to protect the privacy of individual information, but not so restrictive as to limit unduly the practical utility of official statistics.” 2009: UK Statistics Authority. Code of Practice.

Maximising use and value (2) – a wider manifesto

Utility and accessibility

Accessibility

Easy Difficult

Utility – numbers of

users and uses

Few

Many

Maximising use and value – a wider manifesto

• Terms & Conditions– Free at the point of use– Simple licensing

• Statistics – specification– Statistics for very small areas– Simple key statistics– Simple geodemographic area classifications

• Statistics – delivery– Internet (+ DVD)– Popular formats – Excel and csv– Bulk downloads for big distributors– Email alerts

• Accompanying geographical infrastructure– Digital boundaries– Postcode / Output Area directory– Map background

Maximising use and value – visualisation

A map of the OAC classification using a tool developed at UCL which takes a shapefile and creates a fully working Google Maps website.

MapTube enables hosting and searching of map data.

Maximising use and value – enabling comparisons between countries

• Many users seek to compare variables across national boundaries, and much time and frustration could be saved if the Census Offices make it clear which variables use common definitions (and also those which cannot be compared), and produce comparable packages of key variables

• Users in the UK are also hoping that such packaged datasets will all be available from a single website, rather than having to be consolidated country by country

• We are looking forward to this extending not just across the UK, but to Europe as a whole

In conclusion…….

• We must always be

thinking of Jeremy

Bentham’s view of utility

• “It is the greatest good to

the greatest number of

people”

Keith DugmoreDemographic Decisions Ltd.

Tel: (0044) 020 7834 0966

Email: dugmore@demographic.co.uk

Web: www.demographic.co.uk