Helpdesk
The Quality Assurance of Administrative Data (QAAD) is a regulatory standard produced by The Office for Statistics Regulation’s for the quality assurance of administrative data that are used to produce official statistics. The below is an outline of the steps we take to as part of this framework to quality assure our data and our assessment of how we meet these standards.
There are two main parts to this standard:
Low Risk, Medium Profile
The NHS Scotland Workforce statistics are supported by clear and long-established arrangements for data supply. There is a good appreciation of the context in which the data are collected and quality assured. The quarterly statistics on the core NHS workforce are the subject of occasional press articles and parliamentary questions but there are many statistical releases that have a higher profile, e.g. accident and emergency waiting times, drug-related deaths, ONS labour market statistics.
Below is a description of our assessment of the assurance activities we undertake under the four practice areas from the Quality Assurance Matrix.
Enhanced Assurance
NES publishes detailed information on all data sources in the Data sources and quality assurance area of our publications website. An overview of data sources is available on the landing page, which also has links to dedicated pages for each data source. Each source-specific page provides a more detailed overview of the source and uses of the data before covering topics such as
What data are published?
Background, including essential inclusion/exclusion and classification information
Quality assurance, including references to operational context and suppliers’ quality assurance where relevant
Any known Data limitations, including information on alternative data sources where relevant
Any further information
See our pages on the Scottish workforce information standard system, the Scottish standard time system, the Nursing and Midwifery Indexing, and vacancy surveys for examples.
Enhanced assurance
NES has documented its data requirements, legal basis for supply and processing, data transfer processes, data protection and data security in the NHSScotland National HR and Shared Services Data Sharing Agreement.
Our data supply timetable is published on our website and all requirements regarding data collection, submission and quality checking are also communicated directly to suppliers through our central mailbox. Communications regarding data quality checks are archived for reference and to inform data quality messages in our publications. We have recently developed further guidance to aid our data suppliers in understanding the data quality checks that we undertake on their data. This guidance is available on our website and is also sent to suppliers directly.
Our central mailbox is the single point of contact for all suppliers and users and is published on our publication homepage. The mailbox is managed and manned by analysts who work on the publications and who have developed excellent working relationships with suppliers and users. Our Contact Us webpage lists further named contacts and ways to get in touch.
NES has sought the views of suppliers and users through surveys, consultations, data quality investigations and a standing invitation to provide feedback with views on existing content or suggestions for new content.
Basic to Enhanced Assurance
See above on Practice area 1 and our published information on Data sources and quality assurance area. In addition to suppliers’ business-as-usual QA checks, suppliers receive detailed QA exceptions reports from NES in advance of each publications’ census, and get sight of their own aggregated data as part of the early release access process, a final checking stage ahead of publication.
NHS Board HR data management is not subject to external audit. Each Board has its own Audit and Risk Committee that will conduct audits and risk assessments. For example, The NES workforce directorate undergoes audits on its processes for recruitment, employment change and termination, payroll etc. These are not data audits as such but will depend on inspection of data from the systems and processes used to generate data for our official statistics.
Relevant to our statistics on staffing expenditure, all NHS Boards’ finances are subject to external audit by auditors appointed by Audit Scotland. Staffing costs are also reported in Boards’ annual accounts (see NES’ annual report here).
The NES data group sit on both the eESS and JobTrain Reporting Groups. These groups are made up of representatives from all NHS Boards, and meet regularly to discuss the systems, data quality issues and to improve operational reporting within the systems. NES has been able to use the information from these groups to inform our own data quality checks and to provide feedback to the systems teams on how the data is being used.
Enhanced Assurance
Our published data is subject to a range of regular quality assurance checks, both internally and in collaboration with suppliers.
We also undertake periodic quality reviews of specific variables where quality concerns have been raised with us or where we are considering the use of a new variable in our statistics. We have published a recent example on the Events impacting data and reporting page of our publication website (see “Change to Conditioned Hours”).
We highlight any revisions to statistics as a matter of course.
The data used to produce the NHSScotland Camhs and Psychology workforce are adhered to the framework of quality assurance set by the Quality Assurance of Administrative Data (QAAD).
As part of the regulatory standard for quality assurance of the data used, the assessment is based on:
Risk Profile Matrix
Low Risk, Medium Profile
The NHS Scotland CAMHS and Psychology Workforce statistics are based on the data obtained through reliable and streamlined processes from CAMHS and Psychology databases, surveys and Turas Training Programme Management ensuring high level of accuracy.
The information collected and presented are used routinely by NES, the Scottish Government and NHS Boards to support local, regional and national workforce planning, to support educational training and planning, and to assess the impact of central Scottish Government funding to expand CAMHS workforce and Psychology Services workforce and monitor the retention of Applied Psychology trainees within NHS Scotland workforce following qualification completion.
Based on the Quality Assurance Matrix, the assessment of the assurance activities for CAMHS and Psychology workforce data collection under the four practice areas are as below.
Practice area 1: Operational context & administrative data collection
Enhanced Assurance
The introductory pages of the dashboards and data tables provide an overview of the data sources for the quarterly publications of NHS Scotland CAMHS and Psychology workforce and the Data sources and quality assurance area provides detailed information on the data sources.
This includes information on:
What data are published
Background of the data which includes data that are included, excluded and are classified under protected characteristics
Further information that includes key measures specified in the publications and any further data sources used.
Quality assurance and Limitations of the data collected and the sources.
Examples include information on CAMHS Workforce database, Clinical Psychology services Workforce database, Turas Training Programme Management and Vacancy surveys.
Practice area 2: Communication with data supply partners
Enhanced assurance
In accordance with NHSScotland National HR and Shared Services Data Sharing Agreement, the data requirements, legal basis for supply and processing, data transfer processes, data protection and data security are recorded for CAMHS and Psychology workforce data by NES.
The Data provision timetable details the census date, extract date and the date of publications for employment data, staff in training data and vacancy survey data. All correspondence regarding data collection, data quality, submissions and other queries are through the central mailbox. All communications are archived in the CAMHS and Psychology folder in the mailbox and files are saved in the NES system. This is useful for data quality checks, future references and any records that are beneficial for the publications. Further guidance on the are documented and included in the communications sent to our suppliers.
The central mailbox is the main point of contact for all the data suppliers and users of the publications. This is published in the publication homepage and further information is included in our publications and in the Contact Us webpage of the website. The mailbox is managed by the Data group consisting of analysts who work on the quarterly publications and have developed good stakeholder relationships over the past years.
Feedback regarding the process and the publications are sought through the webpage, online surveys and emails.
Practice area 3: QA principles, standards and checks applied by data suppliers
Basic to Enhanced Assurance
Further to the information provided in Practice area 1 and Data sources and quality assurance area published in the website, data quality reports for staff in posts are sent to the data suppliers for data checks at the beginning of the publication cycle. This is a detailed extract on the data available of the workforce in their health board or service area and are verified by CAMHS and Psychology Services lead clinicians, who NES work closely with, to ensure a high level of data accuracy.
NHS Board HR data management is not subject to external audit but have their own Audit and Risk Committee that will conduct audits and risk assessments. This includes inspection of data from the systems and processes used to generate data for Official Statistics publications for CAMHS and Psychology workforce.
Practice area 4: Producer’s QA investigations & documentation
Enhanced Assurance
CAMHS and Psychology Workforce data sources are published in Data sources and quality assurance area.
The quarterly publications, which include the summaries, data tables and dashboards, are published after rigorous quality assurance checks from both the data providers and within the team. The data received are checked within the internal team and data audits and reviews are undertaken periodically when any discrepancies of data are observed.
Any updates or revisions to the published data will be highlighted on the website and the publications.