Introducing the Need to Know project

What are the big decisions of the coming years?

Do we have the data and the analysis we need to make the best decisions possible?

And, if we do, is that information being communicated clearly enough to the public and other decision makers?

Full Fact has joined forces with the Economic and Social Research Council, the House of Commons Library, and the UK Statistics Authority, in a new project to make sure we have good answers to each of these questions.

The Need to Know project aims to anticipate what information citizens will need at big decision points, to ensure it is available in the most robust form possible, and to ensure that it is well communicated.

The UK is lucky to have a formidable group of public institutions dedicated to providing the information we need for important public decisions.

But it takes time to collect reliable data and do high quality analysis.

Anticipating what the major debates in the coming years will be, taking action to ensure that we know what we need to know about them, and explaining that knowledge well enough for it be useful, will help to make sure that the data, statistics, analysis, and research we all pay for can serve us better than ever before.

We'll be saying more about the next steps on Need to Know in the coming weeks, so keep following at fullfact.org/needtoknow for updates.

Image credit: Greg Woodhouse