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Improvements to economic statistics
A comprehensive overview of all the work currently in progress within the Economic Statistics Directorate of ONS (Feb 2000).
Towards the end of 1998 the ONS agreed a programme of new investment in economic statistics. Additional funding was made available for these improvements as part of the ONS Comprehensive Spending Review.
This package of work is an important step towards achieving the strategic goal of the Economic Statistics Directorate, to paint a comprehensive, coherent and timely picture of the UK economy. These projects will create new outputs, improve the quality and coherence of existing outputs and strengthen the statistical infrastructure underpinning data collection. Although the projects are presented as a serial list, there are in fact many interactions between them; for instance, improvements to service sector prices are outputs in their own right but are also important inputs to the new Index of Services.
In the main, work on these projects commenced at the start of the current financial year. It is expected that a further package of improvements to economic statistics will be possible using funds from the ONS Efficiency Review in the forthcoming financial year. Once plans for these have been finalised a further article will appear in Economic Trends announcing them.
Funding for certain projects has been provided in part by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Community, for which ONS is grateful.
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