The UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) has the statutory objective of promoting and safeguarding the production and publication of official statistics that serve the public good, including producing official statistics that inform the public about social and economic matters, and assisting in the evaluation of public policy. The UKSA’s Better Statistics Better Decisions Strategy[1] aims to mobilise the power of data to meet the greater demand from policy makers and users for more timely, frequent, accurate and relevant statistics to help Britain make better decisions. This involves making better use of pre-existing administrative, real time and big data using innovative methods, to produce more frequent, timely and accurate statistics accounting for a wide variety of user needs. As we do this it is essential that we deliver a professional service, not only in the statistics and analysis we produce but also by considering the ethical issues associated with our use of data.
To ensure that this work is completed to the highest ethical standards, the UKSA has established a robust ethical governance structure to provide transparent and timely ethical advice to the National Statistician that the access, use and sharing of public data for research and statistical purposes is ethical and for the public good. This work has included developing ethical principles and establishing a variety of transparent governance processes to assess proposed uses of data for research and statistical purposes against these ethical principles. This paper will present these principles and governance processes.