Public Service Productivity Statistics User Survey 2025

Overview

In 2023, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer asked Sir Ian Diamond, the National Statistician, to undertake a review of public service productivity. As a result, the Office for National Statistics has partnered with government departments, academics and expert users to help develop and improve methodology and data sources to measure public service productivity.  

As part of this review we have implemented improvements to our measures of inputs, quantity output and quality adjustment, and have published the results of new surveys on time use in the public sector and public sector management practices. We are now looking at how the ONS’s publications on public service productivity can be more coherent, and how they can better fit with other productivity publications, given user interest in being able to compare with whole economy and market sector productivity.  

We are using the Office for Statistics Regulation’s framework for achieving coherence to guide this work. An initial review of web analytics for the public sector productivity publications has provided some insight into how the publications are currently being used, including that users most commonly arrive at the publications via a search engine, engagement with the articles steadily declines as the article progresses, and most users do not download the associated datasets. These insights are now being used to inform user engagement activities, including this survey. 

Why your views matter 

Your responses will help us have a good understanding of the questions on productivity that users want answered and why. The results will be used to identify any changes we may need to make to our productivity publications so that: 

• each publication has a specific purpose, and we are delivering against that purpose 

• the purpose of each publication and the differences between them are clear to users 

• we are bringing different sources together where appropriate  

• we create a narrative that provides clarity and insight, and helps users to understand how the statistics fit together 

Who should respond 

We welcome contributions from all users of our public service productivity publications. This includes, but is not limited to: 

•  Arm’s length bodies and other public sector 

•  Business and industry 

•  Central and devolved governments 

•  Charities and voluntary sector 

•  Local government 

•  Think tanks and academia 

•  Charity organisations 

•  International organisations

Responses

We plan to publish an anonymised summary of the responses we receive and will use this summary to inform follow-up discussions with some users. Your individual response will not be shared in full outside of the ONS, and names of individuals and organisations will not be linked to any feedback that you provide.

Accessibility 

If you prefer a different format, or you would like to discuss your feedback, please email psp.review@ons.gov.uk.