LOL, best headline so far this year. The story describes two related but not identical issues. First that the Home Office statistics function is doing a piss-poor job of managing the ‘data’ it uses to back up its policies, namely the unreliablility of data-sets used to report on ASBOs, and other crime, prisons and immigration data. Secondly, the story brings in some more recent HO blunders on tracking crimes committed by Britons abroad, which would seem to have more to do with international data-sharing on criminal records than the HO’s statistical function.
There is a related but unmentioned issue; recent and long overdue moves to make the UK’s Office for National Statistics an autonomous agency that is completely independent of government. Now, as far as I understand it, the NSO does not have responsibility for statistics related to criminal justice, and perhaps it never will. But the current shambolic state of affairs at the HO shows that the only policy numbers worth having are those prepared independently of the advocates of that policy. As we all know, the incentive to cook the books or ignore data that doesn’t support the minister’s/civil servants’ desired policy is just too strong.
{ 5 comments }
Sam 01.16.07 at 2:21 pm
Might we call this the bureaucratic variant of Mannheim’s paradox?
bert 01.17.07 at 5:30 am
All Athenians are liars.
bert 01.17.07 at 5:32 am
Statistics about Cretans available only at disproportionate cost.
Michael Mouse 01.17.07 at 11:11 am
This drives me up the wall. The Office of National Statistics is the sole beacon of half-decent data in a mess of politically-massaged nonsense.
The public – rightly IMO – believe that Government statistics are politically-massaged nonsense. But when you get specific, it’s the Departmental statistics that they specifically mistrust (and not just the Home Office). So to restore trust in Government statistics, they’re going to make the ONS more independent … which is a Good Thing, but there isn’t a profound problem there and it’ll do nothing to deal with the more serious question of the Departmental stats. Gah!
[And note that the headline almost certainly understates the case. The one-in-five figure is for datasets that “received a zero rating for reliability”. We can safely infer from the fact that the that the figure for datasets receiving a “reliable” rating is omitted that it was considerably worse than 80%.]
Decnavda 01.17.07 at 5:27 pm
Can someone here with a smarter statistical mind than I tell me if there is a way for those of us outside the Home Office to assess the reliability of Home Office statistics? According to the headline statistic, the reliability is 80%, but since the 80% reliability statistic also aplies to itself, I do not know what that means. I do not think I can just say that there is a 80% * 80%, or 64% chance any given statistic is reliable, can I? I think I can say there is a 64% chance any given Home Office statistic is reliable under Home Office measures, and a 16% chance it is unreliable under Home Office measures, but what do I do with the other 20%?
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