Monitoring Briefs

From time to time the Authority will commission its Monitoring and Assessment Team to produce brief notes in response to concerns raised publicly or privately in relation to a particular statistical series or issue. These notes will be discussed with producers of statistics to ensure factual correctness, and will then be published on the Authority’s website.

In considering whether to publish such a note, the Monitoring and Assessment Team will have regard to the significance or topicality of the issue, to whether there is a clear link between the issue concerned and trust in the statistical service, to whether there are messages from the issue that could relate to other statistical producers or products, and to whether the necessary resources are available to address the issue at the present time.

These notes were published as "M&A Notes" until June 2010, after which we have labelled them "Monitoring Briefs" to reflect better their nature. For convenience we have continued the numbering sequence of earlier Notes.

The Monitoring and Assessment Team has been established to fulfil the requirements for independent oversight of official statistics as provided for in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. The Team operates transparently and is committed to enhancing the value of official statistics.