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
Policy, Content & Publicity
Support Services
Geography
Data Collection
Data Capture & Processing
Downstream Processing & IT
Output Policy & Production
Total
Source: 2001 General Report
Cost (£millions)
24
13
7
84
61
11
7
207
(%)
12
6
3
42
29
5
3
100
###
The range of potential statistical products
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Resident population tables
Resident population area classifications
Workplace population tables
Origin / Destination tables
Commissioned special tables
Flexible table generation
Microdata files
Plus:
– Digital boundaries for Output Areas
– Postcode / Output Area directory
Marketing the Census – identifying market segments:
a) Sectors
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
Plus:
– The general public
– Value Added Resellers (Census Offices can learn much from them)
Marketing the Census – identifying market segments:
b) User segments – knowledge, and time available
A. Census Specialists
Numbers of
users, and
their expertise
B. Mainstream Analysts
C. Occasional & New Users
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
Many
Utility –
numbers of
users and uses
Few
Easy
Difficult
Accessibility
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 Dugmore
Demographic Decisions Ltd.
Tel: (0044) 020 7834 0966
Email: dugmore@demographic.co.uk
Web: www.demographic.co.uk