Recommendation 16

HM Government Acknowledged

39. The Authority has worked with the CDDO to develop a common understanding of data ethics in the public sector. Our conversations have resulted in agreement with the recommendation that existing frameworks across the UK be reviewed with the aim of encouraging wider adoption of data ethics across government. 40. Regular working-level meetings between the data ethics teams from both departments have been organised, and discussions have included sharing each team’s learnings in the data ethics space. Together, we have discussed the Authority’s data ethics self-assessment tool20 and the recent landscape review around the responsible use of data-driven technologies in the public sector for which the Authority participated in an interview, amongst others. The Authority’s Centre for Applied Data Ethics (CADE) continues to monitor the impact of the tool along with providing practical support and thought leadership in the application of data ethics by the research and statistical community. 41. As noted in the Government response, recommendations coming out of the landscape review suggested consolidation work on data and AI ethics guidance across government. We will work with CDDO and other partners across government on this exercise. 20 https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/the-authority-board/committees/national- statisticians-advisory-committees-and-panels/national-statisticians-data-ethics- advisory-committee/ethics- self-assessment-tool/ 42. We also wish to concur with the point raised in the Government response about flexibility and context. We agree that harmonisation is desirable in some instances and have discussed shared opportunities with CDDO. But our objective is to promote and safeguard the production and publication of official statistics, and specifically provide guidance to researchers (from within and outside of government) on the ethics of their research. Therefore, we agree that much of the guidance material we produce must be discrete from general data ethics guidance produced for central government. Professor Sir Ian Diamond, National Statistician Office for National Statistics September 2024 OSR response This response from the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) addresses the Committee’s recommendations for OSR as well the recommendations with joint responsibility across other government departments. Our response has focused on the development of a framework for reporting data gaps across the UK, and on provisions for improving intelligent transparency across government. Data gap reporting framework