How to use public data for strategy planning

Arlen Pettitt is a marketing communications expert who advises organisations and agencies on how to use data in policy and campaign development.

Here he looks at the key considerations for anyone interested in data insights for their strategy planning.

• You’ve a policy newsletter for the North East called Wor Room. Why Wor and what is it about?

The newsletter is a weekly digest of policy and politics stories and the latest data releases, but it highlights the North East angle in each case. I was forever getting frustrated that the realities facing the North, and the North East in particular, were being hidden by umbrella numbers so I took it upon myself to put together these regular snapshots.

The name comes from a political war room - the place where campaign strategy is made -  and ‘wor’ is Geordie for ‘our’, so Wor Room - our version of that!

• In the face of a probable recession business owners are looking hard at their planning right now. What kind of public data is available to them that could be useful?

There is a huge amount of information out there - it’s just not always easy to find and interpret. In the case of National Statistics, they’re collected for a specific reason - informing policy decisions - but that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful for business owners.

Looking just at the Office for National Statistics, if you’re consumer-facing, for example, you might want an idea of the pressures facing your target market. There’s regular data on earnings, disposable household income, and consumer price inflation, which can tell you where people are having to spend more (food, transport, household goods). There are also weekly batches of data on the economy and social change - it gives an idea of consumer behaviour change, retail footfall, road traffic levels, consumer debit and credit card spending.

Those weekly batches are also a good place to start if you’re in a B2B space too, as it includes stuff like online job adverts and business price increases. Then there’s a business-focused equivalent of that telling you about their concerns, their price pressures, which sectors have passed on cost increases to customers so far, supply chain issues, import/export challenges.

It’s all about building a picture of the environment you’re operating in, and perhaps having a bit more context when making decisions and planning for the future. There’s always a whole lot more in the datasets under the headline publications too, so if you don’t quite find what you’re looking for, dig a little deeper.

• How can statistics and data tell a story and what are the ethical considerations when pulling a campaign or plan together?

Statistics and data can lend weight to campaigns or plans, but they can’t tell a full story by themselves - there’s always individual interpretation involved.

It’s important to keep in mind how and why data was gathered when you’re deciding how to use it. There’s always a temptation to look at data and stretch what it tells you a bit beyond what it can stand, or to omit something which contradicts the story you’re trying to tell.

As a consumer of data you’d ask yourself whether what you’re looking at is legitimate - think about the source, the conclusions being drawn, whether it feels like a complete picture.

The same is true when you’re the one publishing the data. Go into analysis with an open mind and try to pair the numbers with real world stories - the qualitative data - to give it proper context. And, avoid the temptation to stretch the data or conclusions beyond what they can stand!

• What’s an example of a really good piece of data visualisation that you’ve seen recently?

The first one that springs to mind was the Led By Donkeys kamikwasi.tax visualisation of the mini-Budget tax cuts from the beginning of October. It’s about twelve Westminster crises ago now, but it does a good job of setting out the scale of what was being talked about.

More generally I’ll give a shout out to the FT and to their columnist John Burn-Murdoch, who regularly produces incredibly insightful graphics-led pieces. For those who don’t partake, he usually puts the main points up on Twitter, outside of the FT’s paywall - here’s a recent one on income inequality comparing the UK and US (not very favourably) with Slovenia.

• The UK Statistics Authority has a Statistics for the Public Good Strategy to inform the UK, improve lives and build for the future. How important is this to society as a whole?

It’s about trust and transparency. We ought to be able to disagree with the approach or priorities of someone in power, but not need to question whether the evidence they are using is real.

The number of times Sir David Norgrove, who was chair of the UK Statistics Authority until March this year, found himself writing to senior ministers - and even the Prime Minister - to admonish them for misuse of statistics was incredible.

The Statistics for the Public Good Strategy does well to set out a clear vision up to 2025, and includes some bits around changing the approach to collecting data in order to better inform a faster-paced policy environment. That’s really important. A couple of the sets of data I mentioned above were the result of a change in approach that came from the pandemic, when policymakers needed data in as close to real-time as possible.

We live in a world where politics is generating more headlines than ever, and where data is struggling to keep up.

There’s no place for traditional analysis of policy impacts over months and years when the pace of debate means a politician can say something, be reported, and by the time they’re fact-checked, the spotlight has moved on. The record is never corrected.

The Strategy talks about being inclusive, primarily meaning the UK Statistics Authority itself being inclusive as an employer, and in collecting data that’s representative of the UK population. But there’s another element of inclusion that’s important - making sure that the public are informed and part of the statistical conversation.

In my view, the best way to do that is to make sure the data is 1) available and 2) understandable.

Like to know more? Arlen offers half day workshops on how to find and interpret public data. For more information contact: arlen@arlenpettitt.co.uk. You can sign up to his North East policy newsletter at worroom.substack.com