Administrative based population, household and characteristics estimates - Statement of voluntary compliance

Voluntary Statement of Compliance

This statement shows how the National Records of Scotland (NRS) have followed the principles of the Code of Practice for Statistics in the production and release of the publications listed at the beginning of this webpage.

NRS is committed to adhering to the highest standards of analysis. While NRS does produce a range of Official Statistics, the findings of the publications listed at the beginning of this webpage are not considered Official Statistics. Instead, they are considered ‘Statistical Research’, a term used to refer to work at an early stage of development and therefore not meeting the requirements of Official Statistics or Official Statistics in Development.

One of the main reasons for publishing these statistics as statistical research is to support discussions with data suppliers and stakeholders on the application of this work. We have engaged with stakeholders on the development of administrative populations, household and characteristics estimates, and included their feedback in our development of the methodology to produce them.  We will continue to work with stakeholders to gain their feedback on outputs produced and to inform future methodology developments.

Although not Official Statistics, this work has voluntarily adopted the principles of the Code of Practice for Statistics and complies as much as possible, which is why we have applied to be Voluntary Adopters of the Code of Practice for this release.  

The Code of Practice for Statistics has three pillars:

• Trustworthiness
• Quality
• Value

Trustworthiness – trusted people, systems and processes

NRS is a Non-Ministerial Department of the Scottish Government and as such is accountable to the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Fair Work and Culture and ultimately to the Scottish Parliament.

NRS has recruited professional statisticians who are part of the Scottish Government Statistician Professional Group and the Government Statistical Service (GSS). As part of the GSS individuals undertake a commitment to maintain professional standards and participate in continuous professional development.

They have a professional line of accountability to the Head of Profession for Statistics in NRS and to the Chief Statistician for the Scottish Government who has a professional line of accountability to the National Statistician.

Data governance is a critical part of this project. A Data-Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) has been published on the NRS website since 2019, to allow data users to see progress for this project. This DPIA sets out how best practice is followed for the storage, transmission access and analysis of personal data. It also includes information on our stakeholder engagement for the project over the period. The DPIA is reviewed on a yearly basis.

NRS has, and will continue to, pre-announce the dates of forthcoming statistical research papers on administrative data based population, household and characteristics estimates.

Quality - Robust data, methods and processes

The administrative data that is used in the publications listed at the beginning of this webpage undergoes rigorous checks at source from the data providers. Once the data has been received by NRS the data sources are assessed by statisticians for their accuracy, reliability, quality and suitability for use in this project. A summary Quality Assurance of Administrative Datasets (QAAD) is compiled by statisticians at NRS for each dataset and agreed with the data provider for accuracy. This project has regularly published these QAAD documents and will continue to do so.

We have consulted with relevant colleagues in NRS and Scottish Government as part of the quality assurance process for producing these publications

NRS has had discussions with stakeholders on the strengths and limitations of the data used and the underpinning methodology. NRS will continue to have these discussions following the release of publications on administrative population, household and characteristic estimates. 

This will help to continue to identify areas for improvement in the methodology and additional datasets that could improve the quality of the outputs.

Value – efficiency, proportionality and accessibility

This project of work would allow critical demographic statistics to be produced more often, more accurately and best targeted to meet user needs. NRS is working regularly with other UK statistical organisations on equivalent programmes of work to ensure the work provides maximum value and aligns to user needs.

NRS has engaged regularly with users on this work, presenting at events and conferences on the new methodologies and explaining how administrative data was used during the 2022 Census to produce demographic estimates. NRS has planned an ongoing programme of user engagement in 2025 and this feedback will continue to inform the direction of this project.

The efficiency and proportionality of administrative data based estimates lies in that no bespoke data collection is required, instead using existing data sources to produce demographic estimates with an innovative methodology.

All information relating to these publications is accessible on the Scotland's Census website. Given the nature of these statistics and the methodology used to create them, a high level summary of the methodology is included in each main report. More detailed methodology reports are available on the website alongside previous publications which provide additional detail on linkage and analysis.