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The job of the UK’s national statistician is unmanageable and needs to be split to overcome the crisis in the production of key economic data, according to a senior figure who led a government review last year of the UK Statistics Authority.
Denise Lievesley, a former president of the Royal Statistical Society, said Sir Ian Diamond’s resignation from the post on Friday was an opportunity to redesign a role that was too wide-ranging and required too many different skills to be easily found in one person.
As national statistician, Diamond was responsible not only for the daily running of the Office for National Statistics, but also for leading the government’s statistical service, representing the UK internationally and advising ministers.
“It’s a very, very big role . . . and it’s become a more difficult job in recent years,” Lievesley said, referring to growing public scepticism of expert evidence, and the greater complexity of data sources available.
“You want someone who is a statistician, and leads the profession and can answer questions about detailed statistical modelling with confidence,” she added, noting that most candidates would be specialists in either social or economic statistics, but not both.
“Then you need someone who is a good manager. Statistical operations are large logistical exercises . . . And you need someone who is a really good politician, who understands how to prioritise and decide what statistics are going to be collected.”
Diamond stepped down saying that “ongoing health issues” meant he was “unable to give the full commitment he would like” to drive the ONS forward. His resignation follows a period in which the statistics agency has come under fire for flaws in critical economic data, and his leadership style blamed for a crisis in morale among its staff.
The Office for Statistics Regulation — also an arm of UKSA — said last month that the ONS needed to “fully acknowledge and address declining data quality”, taking urgent action to bolster its surveys, and show how it would prioritise and fund its core economic statistics.
Diamond was deeply involved with the UK government’s response to the pandemic, designing new surveys to collect vital data on infections. He also took on leadership of the government’s network of analysts and chairs Southampton university’s governing body.
“It’s too many things!” Lievesley said, adding that when it came to running the ONS, “you need a really good COO — and I don’t think the COO needs to be the national statistician”.
Sir Robert Devereux, a former senior civil servant, is conducting a government-commissioned review of ONS performance and culture, which will examine its structure and leadership, as well as its governance and accountability to ministers.
Lievesley, who led a Cabinet Office-commissioned review of UKSA, is not the only influential figure in the statistical community who believes Devereux should look at ways to redesign the national statistician’s role — although radical changes would require legislation.
Another senior figure noted it had taken a long time to fill the post before Diamond was appointed in 2019. A third said: “It’s a very demanding mix of skills . . . a person who is a capable leader of 4,000 people and a world leading statistician. It’s not inevitable those skills exist in the same person.”
