ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two major developments which will determine the future relationship between the Department of Health and collectors of statistics in social service departments. Statistical output needs to be set out so as to illuminate issues of importance to local managers' policy and management agenda. The developments all point to a re-statement or the purposes of national data collection and the respective roles of central and local government. The Statistics Division of the Department of Health now have the challenge of taking forward the review work and in doing so, will try to ensure that essential information needs are safeguarded. The scrutiny team recommended radical reductions in the amount of data collected from social services departments and gave specific consideration to the use of sampling methods or less frequent collection. It was also felt that a smaller set of more relevant statistics could be collected more quickly and so be more useful than the detail previously collected.
