Evidence-informed policy-making in a data-driven age: The role and limits of official statistics

Paper by Steve MacFeely and Ashley Ward: “Official statistics have long provided a foundation for evidence-informed policy-making, offering professionally independent, quality-assured and transparent evidence to support democratic decision-making. Yet the contemporary policy environment presents statistical systems with a difficult set of pressures. Demand is growing for faster, more granular and more actionable evidence, particularly during crises, while policymakers increasingly draw on dashboards, models, artificial intelligence and non-traditional data sources. These tools can improve timeliness and analytical capacity, but they also raise risks relating to bias, opacity, representativity, uncertainty and accountability. This paper examines the evolving role of official statistics in this context, arguing that their value lies not in automating or determining policy choices, but in anchoring them. It distinguishes between evidence-informed and data-driven decision-making, warning that the latter may imply a technocratic shift in which data appear to substitute for human judgement. Drawing on Irish and international examples, the paper considers the institutional, methodological and democratic challenges facing official statistics, including data access, public trust, communication, artificial intelligence and the post-truth information environment. It concludes that official statistics remain essential democratic infrastructure: they should inform decisions, clarify trade-offs and support accountability, while remaining subordinate to context, deliberation and judgement…(More)”.