What it means to be an Official Statistics and Accredited Official Statistics provider

Official statistics and accredited official statitsics are produced in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.  Our compliance with the code can give you confidence that our published statistics have public value, are high quality, and trustworthy.

As a producer of official statistics in Scotland the SSSC must comply with the pre-release access rules set forth in the Pre-release Access to Official Statistics (Scotland) Order 2008. 

Our 2011 Workforce Data report published in October 2012 was our first official statistics publication.

Accredited official statistics are official statistics that have been independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) and confirmed to comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.  Accredited official statistics are called national statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.  The Mental Health Officer (MHO) Survey report was approved as a national statistics (now known as accredited official statistics) publication when it was undertaken by Scottish Government, and we (the SSSC) took over responsibility for it from December 2012.  OSR have assessed the SSSC's MHO publication for compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics and the letter of confirmation of accredited offical statistics status can be found here.  

To comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics, the SSSC has produced the following documents to set out its practice in relation to the code: