We Asked, You Said, We Did

We asked

Last year, the Cabinet Office Equality Hub put a series of proposals to reform the ‘Ethnicity facts and figures’ website out to public consultation. We want to improve Ethnicity facts and figures, helping users to understand the drivers and factors behind disparities, and minimise the risk of misinterpretation and incorrect conclusions being drawn. For policy-makers we will be providing better evidence for targeting interventions and resources at the real point of need. We proposed to do this by streamlining measure pages while providing deeper analysis of the most notable disparities.

You said

Overall, the respondents agreed with the majority of our proposals. There were 3 areas where respondents disagreed with our proposals as presented: 

1. Respondents suggested that the identification of criteria used to prioritise measures needs to be more responsive to developments in society. 
2. The proposal to present data for some measures without any commentary was concerning for many users.
3. Respondents were also concerned that there were a number of measures relating to the criminal justice system in the medium and lower priority categories.

We did

1. The Equality Hub will undertake formal annual reviews of the criteria used to prioritise work on the development of measure pages and also regularly ‘horizon scan’ to incorporate emerging priorities that may disproportionately impact ethnic minority groups.
2. Measures will be reviewed against the prioritisation criteria at least every 12 months. Where we identify an emerging priority, specific measures will be re-prioritised as needed. New measures will be published according to their priority against the criteria in use at that time.
3. The Equality Hub will create a template for ‘medium priority’ measures to show one table or chart with ethnicity breakdown and Main facts and figures drawing out key points from other disaggregations. We will develop code to automate the writing of the Main facts and figures commentary for these measures.
4. In addition, we will expand the automation of Main facts and figures commentary to the lower priority measures.
5. We will review the priority of Crime and Justice measures to identify whether any should be high priority.
6. We will review the proposed groupings for combining measures; where measures are closely related (eg Key Stage 2 attainment) the pages will be combined.
7. The Equality Hub will continue to work with departments across government to provide more granular and useful data.
8. The Equality Hub will work with the relevant departments to provide deeper analysis into the following priority topics: 

• Educational attainment
• Transition from education to the labour market
• Maternal and perinatal health disparities

9. The Equality Hub will take steps to publicise the Ethnicity facts and figures website more widely.