The information in this blogpost may now be out of date. See the current GOV.UK content and publishing guidance.
We're releasing a new feature today: statistics release announcements. This will create a calendar of upcoming official and national statistics publications on GOV.UK.
If you - or your organisation - currently publish statistics, here’s what you need to know about what’s changing.
Statistics release calendar on GOV.UK
The GOV.UK statistics release calendar is designed to replace the statistics.gov.uk Publication Hub (the Hub) currently used by the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
For a little while, statistics publishers will need to publish on both the Hub and GOV.UK, while we make sure everything works. We're hoping to stop dual publishing shortly.
People who've already tried it tell us that the GOV.UK interface is a lot easier to use than the existing Publication Hub. We've been working with ONS on this for a while, gathering early feedback from statisticians.
ONS has copied over about 800 announcements from the Hub. They have also contacted everyone who currently publishes to the Hub so your statistics publishers should know about these changes.
What GOV.UK publishers need to do
Anyone who publishes official or national statistics on GOV.UK should check all their upcoming announcements are listed correctly.
From now on, please publish statistics by:
- creating an announcement
- creating the publication from the announcement
This will link them, and save publishing time.
We've created guidance on 'How to publish statistics on GOV.UK' and 'How to publish statistics release announcements on GOV.UK'. These instructions are in Beta, so if you see anything that needs to be changed, let us know.
If you need to get anyone from your team trained to publish statistics on GOV.UK, send us their names and email addresses. We're running statistics training courses in August and September (for people who are new to publishing on GOV.UK).
If you don’t publish on GOV.UK yet
If you don’t currently publish on GOV.UK, but you do publish on the Hub, ONS should already have been in touch. We'll also get in touch in shortly to see how we can help.
Look through your statistics
You should only use the publication type 'Statistics' for official and national statistics - that is, statistics approved by the head of statistics within the department and governed by the UK Statistics Authority.
Any other type of statistic or data should be treated as a normal publication, either ‘research and analysis’ or ‘guidance’. You may need to reclassify some of your previous publications - if so, please make sure the work's complete by the end of August at the latest.
And if you create your own ‘calendar of statistical releases’ either as a publication or on your ‘Our statistics’ page, you don’t need to do that anymore. The statistics release announcements can be filtered by your department, and you can link from ‘Our statistics’.
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7 comments
Comment by Andrew Robertson posted on
Hi, you ask us to re-classify our publications tagged as 'statistics' to another category before the end of August. Before we do that, do you have any progress on the re-naming of document types that Alice blogged about in March? https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2014/03/11/changing-publication-types/
It's frustrating enough that we've only recently transitioned and was advised to use the 'statistics' type for certain publications; I would hate to have to alter it yet again when new types are issued. Perhaps there is scope for a new type to cover the data-type publications we've tagged as 'statistics'? (or a sub-set of research and analysis).
Comment by Persis Howe posted on
Hi Andrew,
We're not currently making any more changes to the publication subtypes. Transitioning all the agencies and organisations to GOV.UK has taken priority for the moment.
Let's chat on email about Environment Agency statistics. I think we might need to check with the lead statistician at Defra on whether these are official statistics. If they aren't we might be able to help with reclassifying them. It sounds like loads of work and there might be a work around.
Thanks,
Persis
Comment by Andrew Robertson posted on
Hi Persis
Yes please, a chat would be good (you should have my email address from the post?).
I'm also interested to understand the impact on organisation home pages if we don't have any publications under 'statistics', as that is a section heading and feed on our home page https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/environment-agency#publications
Thanks!
Comment by Persis Howe posted on
Hi Andrew,
Let's chat on email. We'll sort this out.
Thanks,
Persis
Comment by Kevin Harris posted on
For DECC can you arrange training for Kevin Harris, kevin.harris@decc.gsi.gov.uk, and Anwar Annut, anwar.annut@decc.gsi.gov.uk, ideally in early September.
Thanks.
Comment by Clare Lenton posted on
Hi Kevin,
I'll email you directly to discuss the training.
Thanks,
Clare
Comment by Tom Sumner posted on
Are there any plans to add workflow into this system?
So that editors can check the formatting and styling of these announcements before they are published?
We've already had an example of an announcement going live with incorrect styling and without having a draft linked to it. Now that the actual publication date has passed there's no way to associate the 2 items and redirect the announcement without raising a zen desk ticket.