Source · Select Committees · Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
Recommendation 23
23
Accepted
Paragraph: 78
It is unsatisfactory that data provided to this Committee has been subsequently revised.
Recommendation
It is unsatisfactory that data provided to this Committee has been subsequently revised. The PHSO should report back to the Committee on what steps it is taking to quality assure its data before it is published and used by the Committee.
Government Response Summary
The PHSO states that it conducts a thorough review of all performance data annually and that data provided to the Committee is quality assured to the highest standard, explaining the circumstances around the data revision.
Paragraph Reference:
78
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
PHSO conducts a thorough review of all performance data on an annual basis. Data provided to the Committee is quality assured to the highest standard. We contracted a third-party provider to conduct the 2021 Staff Survey to ensure it was independent. As part of regular quality assurance checks, we identified that the research agency had applied a methodology, which, although accurate, was not fully consistent with the way the Civil Service People Survey was reported. This only affected certain group totals, where questions are brought together. It did not affect the individual question scores . To enable PHSO to accurately benchmark performance against the civil service, we updated our figures and informed PACAC via our 2021–22 evidence submission. The correction of the methodology resulted in changes to some of the group scores. While these changes had the impact of increasing more of PHSO’s group scores than decreasing them, it had no impact on the overall trends in the staff survey results or the insight that can be derived from this exercise. Nor did it have any impact on the overall staff engagement score. PHSO acted in line with our value of transparency to inform PACAC of this minor data error as promptly as we became aware of it. We judged that it was better to update figures, rather than leave potentially misleading data in the public domain. We apologise for any inconvenience caused to the Committee team as a result.