Doc, sneezy, grumpy, ehm…
Can you remember the names of the seven dwarves? Tricky, right? Well, save the effort. Instead, it’s time to remember the UK’s Office for National Statistics new seven Headline Measures of Wellbeing, which were launched last week: Life satisfaction, self-reported health, trust in government, trust in others, NEET rate, GDP per capita and greenhouse gas emissions.
By identifying a handful of indicators that are updated quarterly, they are hoping to make it easier to build an understandable picture of how the country is doing and reduce reliance on that all-so-simple and yet flawed GDP figure. And the indicators they have chosen are decent. Everyone will have an opinion about indicators that should be in there, but they have landed on a set which could challenge the mainstream narrative about what government is there to do.
Will it work? We sincerely hope so, and at the launch presentation they articulated a coherent story based on these indicators. Sadly, it wasn’t picked up much by newspapers(with one exception), but since 28th February, the media have been pretty much focussed on one global news story.
But we think there is one thing that the ONS could have done to help ensure their headline indicators become more central in political debate: get the public involved in their selection. The original set of wellbeing measures developed in 2011 were informed by a public consultation, but the precise influence that this consultation had on the selected indicators was not entirely transparent. And, in any case, the ‘public’ that were involved in the consultation were often self-selecting. People who already had interest in the topic, often professional . Not a representative cross-section of British society.
15 years on and we have witnessed a deliberative wave, with more examples of countries or cities taking seriously the opinions of their citizens and residents by organising citizen assemblies or citizen panels. These ‘mini-publics’ are randomly selected to genuinely represent the population they are making decisions for. And they engage in proper evidence-based conversations, where participants hear arguments for and against different positions. That explains, perhaps, why the Irish citizen assembly on abortion successfully lead to a position that – five years earlier – would have seemed impossible.
Identifying headline indicators of wellbeing is a perfect discussion to engage citizens in. Because who is best placed to define what wellbeing is, but people themselves?
In April, we will be beginning the first ever citizen-led project to identify a set of headline indicators, in the small town of Kerava, Finland. The Good Life in Kerava Residents’ Panel will meet three times, with the aim of selecting five headline indicators. The seven dwarves might be hard to remember, but most people (at least in my generation) can remember the five Spice Girls without too much thought. And perhaps more importantly, many of us have a sense of their personalities, or even their stories. Because that’s the level of acquaintance we need to get to with our Headline Measures of Wellbeing. Because at the end of the day, each one should tell a story, and one that is central to our society.
To our friends in the ONS: take a look at what we do in Kerava. If it works out, maybe it’ll be time to try something similar in the UK.
