Consultation outcome

DSIT Digital Sector Economic Estimates Consultation

From:: Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
Published: 1 August 2024
Last updated: 17 December 2024 — See all updates

Detail of outcome

What we asked you

The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) consulted from 1 August 2024 to 26 September 2024 on the Digital Sector Economic Estimates series.

The consultation sought user feedback on DSIT’s plan for the series, with the potential to reduce the number of releases produced as part of the series. The recommended plan entailed continuing to produce the Annual Gross Value Added (GVA) release and the Employment (Calendar Year) release whilst ceasing or pausing production on all other releases.

In the consultation, we asked users to consider:

Which releases were used.
How useful each release was for the user.
If there would be any impacts from stopping certain releases.
Whether alternative statistics could be used if a release were stopped.
Any other feedback they could provide on the series.

For more information, please see the consultation document at the bottom of the page.

What you said

Our consultation received six complete responses, therefore, any results discussed below are only based on a limited number of responses and robust statistical analysis was not possible. We received responses from government departments, voluntary and commercial sector organisations, and academics.

The responses largely supported our initial streamlining plan, with Annual GVA being deemed to be our most “Essential” release, followed by Employment (Calendar Year) and Productivity and Business Demographics releases.

The impacts of ceasing production of each release were mixed, with ceasing some releases having a greater impact compared to others. The Annual GVA and Employment (Calendar Year) had some of the largest potential impacts if ceased, mainly due to their current high usage by respondents. Other releases had a more limited impact if ceased, due to the availability of alternative sources of information.

We are not able to provide further breakdowns due to potential disclosure risk.

What we will do

Since the closure of the consultation, we have produced analysis of the results and conducted additional engagement with key users in order to build a consensus on the future of the series. Through balancing the consultation results against the development work planned for the series, we have identified which releases are the most important for current user priorities, and which can be temporarily or permanently stopped to meet our short-term and long-term resourcing pressures.

Subsequently, we intend to make the following changes to our series:

Temporarily pause production of the Business Demographics, Imports and Exports of Services and Goods, Productivity and Headline Earnings releases until further notice. We intend to engage with users of these statistical releases in mid-to-late 2025, please use the contact information below if you would like to be involved.
Cease production of the Monthly GVA, non-calendar year Employment and Demographic Earnings releases based on user feedback.
Incorporate the Regional GVA release into future Annual GVA releases, with the first of these combined releases planned to be published in Summer 2025. This is designed to remove the time lag between these two releases to improve usability. Each release will retain their current methodologies.

As a result, for 2025, the provisional release calendar for the Digital Sector Economic Estimates series will be:

February 2025: Annual GVA (provisional statistics). This will only include the standard data tables with no accompanying report. The report will instead be included in the Summer release so that it can provide a more comprehensive picture of Digital Sector GVA using revised statistics and incorporating regional analysis.
June 2025: Employment (Calendar Year). The format of this release will remain the same, consisting of both standard data tables and an accompanying report.
Summer 2025: Annual GVA (revised statistics) and Regional GVA. This will include standard data tables and an accompanying report incorporating both the Annual GVA and Regional GVA releases.

From 2026 onwards, we will only produce the Employment (Calendar Year) release and the combined Annual and Regional GVA release in the Summer.

By following this plan, we will refocus our series on the most used releases, repurposing resource towards the areas that need the most development. We aim to mitigate the risks associated with ceasing some of the other releases by potentially incorporating these outputs into the new releases produced as part of our development work.

This will also enable us to:

Assess the current methodological approaches used for the releases in the series to determine any improvements that could be made.
Explore the potential to standardise statistics across the multiple DSIT sectors, so that statistics for each sector can be more easily compared.
Consider alternative ways to present and disseminate findings from the remaining releases in the series, so that they have more impact for users.

We would like to thank all of those who took part in the consultation and provided us with invaluable feedback that will guide the future of the Digital Sector Economic Estimates series.

If you have any further questions, please email [email protected].

Original consultation

Consultation description

This consultation seeks user feedback on the Digital Sector Economic Estimates, a branch of the Economic Estimates series recently transferred from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).

DSIT are seeking to develop and improve the economic statistics we produce. In the immediate term, we wish to focus on fewer statistical releases, with an aim to improve their quality and resonance with users. In the longer term, we aim to develop additional statistical releases on the economic performance of DSIT’s sectors to meet the demands of our users.

This consultation seeks feedback on DSIT’s proposed plan to streamline the current series containing multiple economic metrics on the size of the digital sector. We intend to continue producing the annual Gross Value Added (GVA) and Employment (Calendar Year Data) releases but are considering ceasing production of the other releases. Feedback received through this consultation will be used to inform the scope and implementation of our plan.

Please read our consultation privacy notice for more information on the data collected as part of the consultation.

The questions in the survey have also been detailed in the below HTML document, if users would prefer to reply by email instead.

Documents