Concerns under the Code of Practice for Statistics
Concerns under the Code of Practice for Statistics
On 5 January 2022 the Government Statistical Service published guidance on reporting concerns under the Code of Practice for Statistics. We currently have no concerns to report under this guidance.
Before 5 January 2022 the Government Statistical Service published guidance on reporting breaches of the Code of Practice for Statistics. Here are the breaches we reported under that guidance:
| Date Reported | Full Report | Summary | How we responded |
| 12 November 2020 | Deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19) in Scotland | The statistical news release was live on the NRS website prior to the scheduled publication time – approximately 19 hours early. | A review was undertaken with the NRS webmasters team. We updated the guidance to ensure there is clarity on the process for issuing statistical news releases. |
| 16 December 2019 | Births, deaths and other vital events | The statistical news release was issued to the media one day early and uploaded to the Scottish Government website by a communications officer. |
The error was spotted quickly and the news release was taken down from the website within 15 minutes. A correction was then issued to the media.
Guidance for communications officers on dealing with statistical news releases was improved and updated and training put in place. |
| 16 December 2019 | Life Tables for Scotland | The URL of a PDF document for pre-release access was live approximately 20 hours before publication time. The URL was not searchable and it was unlikely that anyone who did not have pre-release access would have been able to access it. | Our website replication process was changed to ensure that attachments were not accessible prior to publication time. |
| August 2010 | Registrar General’s Annual Review of Demographic TrendsRegistrar General’s Annual Review of Demographic Trends |
Two Scottish Interim Life Tables, which were due to be published at 9:30am on 6th August, along with the Registrar General’s Review of Demographic Trends 2009, accidentally went live on the General Register Office for Scotland website prior to 6th August. |
From now on, any web page that is being prepared for publication will be checked on the live website to ensure the current page has not been updated until after the embargo date. |
| July 2008 | Mid-year Population Estimates for Scotland |
The 2007 Mid-Year Population Estimates for Scotland were due for publication on 24 July. The headline information appeared in the Scotland on Sunday on 20 July and in the Daily Record on 21 July. |
The Registrar General wrote on 21 July to all who had been given pre-release access, pointing out that the pre-release information was explicitly provided for the sole purpose of allowing Ministers to respond at the time of release and asking all recipients to say what they did with the information. All recipients replied, but none provided any information which allowed the source of the breach to be traced. The e-mail IT system was interrogated but this revealed no relevant information. |