Criticism of The ONS
Len Cook, one National Statistician, described himself as the country's most abused civil servant. Occasional errors and revisions accounts for some past criticism while the allocation of Private Finance Initiative expenditure (albeit following OECD and international statistical guidelines according to who carries the risk) has attracted political attention.
Many of the most controversial topics for statistics issued by government do not come from ONS though they are expected to meet National Statistics standards. Crime statistics and other data (e.g. health and education) that could be deemed to assess the effectiveness of government policies often attract media scepticism. The compulsory nature of the census (unlike most other surveys by academics and market researchers) differentiates ONS from other data collectors (apart from HM Revenue and Customs). The Office for National Statistics won the 2004 Big Brother Award for the "Most Heinous Government Organisation" from the campaigning organisation Privacy International for its Citizen Information Project. The project is one of several that lead the Information Commissioner to warn that there is a danger of the country "sleepwalking" into a surveillance society. There has also been criticism of the ONS and of the government for its pursuit of government policies for modernization and for relocation to sites outside London. It is not moving to a single site and will continue to perform most of its functions from the two sites in Newport and Titchfield while reducing its London operation to one eventual small location.
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