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Improving statistical services
19/06/2008
The UK Statistics Authority has been welcomed by Scottish Ministers today.
The new independent body with a statutory objective to promote, improve, and safeguard Official Statistics across the UK came into being in April 2008.
The Scottish Government has published its response to the consultation document 'Statistics Reform: Improving Statistical Services in Scotland'.
Statistics have an important role to play in ensuring people can understand how well Scotland in performing, Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism Jim Mather said.
Mr Mather said:
"This Government's single, over-arching Purpose is to improve sustainable economic growth. Scotland Performs will allow people to measure our progress against our Purpose targets.
"It is underpinned by independent statistics - there is no doubt we need quality statistics to understand how Scotland is performing.
"Statistics are more freely available now than ever before but we can still improve the service.
"We want our public services to be high quality, continually improving, efficient and responsive to the needs of customers. This applies to our statistical service too.
"I very much welcome the role that the Authority will play in our Statistics Reform programme. The Authority has a statutory duty to assess all our National Statistics, which will raise awareness of the high professional integrity that currently exists in our statistical service. If there is something wrong, or something we can do better, in the production of our statistics then the Authority will report this publicly and to the Scottish Parliament."
The Scottish Government response to the consultation 'Statistics Reform: Improving Statistical Services in Scotland' outlines how the reform to improve statistical services has been shaped by the opinion of key users.
It also invites views on the draft Pre-release Access to Statistics (Scotland) Order 2008, which will set out in statute the rules that statisticians must follow to give Ministers and others advance notice of statistical publications.
The UK Statistics Authority came into being on April 1, 2008. It was created by the UK Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.