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And it came to pass in those days that they went out a decree from Caesar Augustus

that the world should be taxed and all went to be taxed everyone to his own city.

That was an early government census,

a collection of data necessary for the financing of legions

and the building of aqueducts.

But what happens in the infinitely more complex modern world

if your data collection becomes untrustworthy?

Because it seems that we may be in that situation here and now,

particularly in the area of economic statistics. Some even talk of a data crisis. Are we in such a

crisis? If we are, how worried should we be and what should we do about it? Step into the

briefing room and together we'll find out.

First, let's look at the history of data collection in the UK.

Georgina Sturge is a research affiliate at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford

and the author of the book Some of Us, that sum as in

S-U-M.

Georgina Sturge, when did we first start to systematically collect data in the UK?

Should we start with Doomsday Book, or is it later?

Well, I would start later, and I'd say that the first systematic data collection really began in the at the very

beginning of the 19th century. So I really like to market with the 1801 census, the very first

census that we had. And before that, there were some fairly sporadic data collection efforts,

including the Doomsday book that you just mentioned.

...