National Statistical

The findings of the National Statistician’s Independent Review of Public Services Productivity measurement have been published today. Richard Heys and Debra Prestwood tell us how the data have been improved and what the review tells us about changes in the operation of our public services.

Between us we have worked at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), including on productivity statistics, for 45 years. For much of that time the measurement of public services and their productivity was one of the ongoing challenges, following the Atkinson Review in 2005, and after the Bean Review in 2016.

Background to the Review

Between 2016 and 2019, the Productivity team at the ONS worked hard to make improvements on our key measures, developing improved metrics of criminal justice, children’s social care and adult social care, reaching a point where 55% of all public services are measured using the best metrics.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted almost all public services, but also left government debt approaching 100% of GDP. In this light, the need to ensure that public services maximise the delivery of outcomes and outputs per input is as important as it has ever been, and hence ensuring accurate measures is vital.

Therefore, in June 2023, the then Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, asked the National Statistician to review public services productivity measures to aid policy-making across Whitehall. Since then there has been an intensive programme of activity by the ONS in collaboration with colleagues across government, academia and in the devolved governments.

What lessons have we learnt?

The main report, published today, details improved measurements across almost all major public services: health, education, policing, immigration, taxation, benefits, defence, criminal justice, and a large number of recommendations for the relevant teams to work on implementing into the future.

Just to give a couple of examples: the Review signals that we will start measuring the transition to Universal Credit from multiple legacy benefits when calculating social security administration productivity, and improving the way we measure education attainment as an impact on the quality of output of the Further Education sector.

Beyond that, we’re not going to recap this work in this blog. Rather, we are going to focus on those aspects of the programme which generated its success. The first is research: the Review is essentially building on 15 years of continued research, which meant that when we began we already had firm ideas on what we needed to implement and prioritise. Building on strong foundations has paid dividends. Second is trusting our experienced staff: many of those working on the Review have been in this area of statistics for a number of years and built a depth of knowledge. Thirdly, we’ve exploited the strength of the Government Statistical Service: this is not a project the ONS delivered on its own, but one on which it has worked closely with experts in many departments.

Put together, these three points have delivered a Review which stands as a worthy successor to the Atkinson Review, one that also made a major impact when published 20 years ago.

We want to conclude by thanking all those colleagues across government, academia, the devolved governments and other organisations who have helped make the Review a success. While we mustn’t rest on our laurels, today’s report marks a notable gear shift in our measurement and understanding of public services productivity.