Karen Dunnell
Encyclopedia
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
(born 16 June 1946) was National Statistician
National Statistician
Directors of the UK's Office for National Statistics also hold the title of National Statistician.-Status:They are de facto Permanent Secretaries but do not use that title. As the ONS incorporated the OPCS, the Director also became the Registrar General for England and Wales...
and Chief Executive of the Office for National Statistics
Office for National Statistics
The Office for National Statistics is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.- Overview :...
of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and head of the Government Statistical Service from 1 September 2005 until retiring on 28 August 2009. Since its inception in 2008, she was also the Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority
UK Statistics Authority
The UK Statistics Authority is an independent body operating at arm's length from Government as a non-ministerial department, directly accountable to Parliament...
.
Background
Born Karen Williamson in Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, USA, she moved to Britain when she was a young child and was educated at Maidstone Grammar School for Girls
Maidstone Grammar School for Girls
Maidstone Grammar School for Girls, also known as Maidstone Girls Grammar School , is a selective grammar school in Maidstone, UK. It operates under the 11 plus exam system, in which students take an exam at the end of primary school in order to be accepted at this school...
and Bedford College, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Her father was a US serviceman during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and her mother, who is English, was a teacher. Karen Dunnell has been married twice to Keith Dunnell (1969–76) and Professor Michael Adler (1979–94). She has two adult daughters by her second marriage and two grandchildren. She lives in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and has a home in the Var
Var (département)
The Var is a French department in the region Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in Provence, in southeast France. It takes its name from the river Var, which used to flow along its eastern boundary, but the boundary was moved in 1860...
in SE France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
Career
Karen Dunnell studied sciences at school because she wanted to go into medicine. However, a growing interest in politics and society led her to study sociology at Bedford College, LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, from where she graduated in 1967. She began her career as a health care researcher with the Institute of Community Studies, where much of her work involved healthcare surveys, and, in 1972, she wrote a book, Medicine Takers, Prescribers and Hoarders with Ann Cartwright
Ann Cartwright
Ann Cartwright is a statistician and socio-medical researcher whose Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care was launched by Michael Young, initially under the auspices of his Institute of Community Studies. The Institute produced numerous books and reports for the Department of Health which...
,. This established a measure of morbidity and the relationship between medicines acquired through the NHS and over-the-counter. Dunnell then joined the Department of Epidemiology & Public Health at St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS hospital in London, England. It is administratively a part of Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. It has provided health care freely or under charitable auspices since the 12th century and was originally located in Southwark.St Thomas' Hospital is accessible...
Medical School, working on multi-disciplinary projects alongside doctors, social workers, statisticians and economists, including a major project that measured the cost of caring for people with severe disabilities in the community compared with the cost of caring for them in institutions.
She joined the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys
Office of Population Censuses and Surveys
The Office of Population Censuses and Surveys , was created in May 1970 through the merger of the General Register Office and the Government Social Survey Department....
(OPCS) in 1974, as a social survey officer in the Survey Division, where she stayed for 15 years, working on, among other things, two major surveys. One of these was the UK's contribution to the World Fertility Survey, published as a book, Family Fertility, in 1976. This measured cohabitation for the first time and first asked the question, now a standard, "At what age did you first have sexual intercourse?". The other studied the work of community nurses, using an intensive survey combined with diary-keeping. She was promoted to Assistant Director, overseeing all health surveys in the OPCS. These included surveys on drinking and smoking and a major survey on disability that established what proportion of people in different age groups had different disabilities. She was responsible, in this post, for liaising with the Department of Health
Department of Health (United Kingdom)
The Department of Health is a department of the United Kingdom government with responsibility for government policy for health and social care matters and for the National Health Service in England along with a few elements of the same matters which are not otherwise devolved to the Scottish,...
.
In 1990, she moved from working with health surveys in the OPCS to medical statistics. When OPCS merged with the Central Statistical Office
Central Statistical Office, UK
The Central Statistical Office was a British government department charged with the collection and publication of economic statistics for the United Kingdom...
to form the ONS in 1996, she became Director of Demography and Health Statistics, working on general practice statistics and inequalities in health, and established the Health Statistics Quarterly journal. In 1999, she moved to a central post responsible for launching National Statistics and dealing with the arrival of Len Cook
Len Cook
Leonard Warren "Len" Cook, CBE is a professional statistician who was Government Statistician of New Zealand from 1992 to 2000 and National Statistician and Director of the Office for National Statistics, United Kingdom, and Registrar General for England and Wales from 2000 to...
, the first National Statistician, in 2000. She was promoted to Group Director in Social Statistics in 2000, managing health, demography, population, labour market and social reporting and was temporarily promoted to the Board of the ONS in 2001 in the run-up to the 2001 census. A major reorganisation, which divided the activities of ONS into 'sources' and 'analysis', followed and Dunnell was given the job of setting up the new "Sources" Directorate, bringing together household and business surveys, the infrastructure that supported them, the statistical modernisation programme and planning for the 2011 Census
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...
. She took up this post on the ONS Executive in 2002.
National Statistician
Karen Dunnell was appointed National Statistician and Director of the Office for National Statistics from 1 September 2005 at a time when the government was being criticised for the quality, credibility and uses to which it put the statistics generated both by ONS and by governments departments. Soon afterwards, Gordon BrownGordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...
, then Chancellor of the Exchequer
Chancellor of the Exchequer
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the title held by the British Cabinet minister who is responsible for all economic and financial matters. Often simply called the Chancellor, the office-holder controls HM Treasury and plays a role akin to the posts of Minister of Finance or Secretary of the...
, announced that, following the success of the idea of independence for the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England as a means of gaining trust in the its interest-rate decisions, a form of independence should be applied to ONS so that its data could also gain public trust. ONS is now accountable to Parliament via a Statistics Board, known as the UK Statistics Authority
UK Statistics Authority
The UK Statistics Authority is an independent body operating at arm's length from Government as a non-ministerial department, directly accountable to Parliament...
(UKSA), rather than, as previously, via a Treasury minister. Following the implementation of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007
Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007
The Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which established the UK Statistics Authority . It came into force in April 2008. Sir Michael Scholar was appointed as the first Chair of the UKSA....
, the role of Registrar-General for England and Wales, an ancient additional title, held by the National Statistician since the inception of ONS, was transferred, with the General Register Office for England and Wales, which she also headed, to the Identification and Passport Service in the Home Office
Home Office
The Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...
Controversy
A government policy inherited by Karen Dunnell as National Statistician aroused controversy. Following the efficiency reviews initiated by the Chancellor and Prime Minister (viz. Review of Public Sector Relocation by Sir Michael Lyons, 2003-4, and Releasing Resources to the Front Line, Sir Peter Gershon, 2004), the government adopted a policy, criticised by unions, of dispersal of certain public service posts and functions out of London. The policy was initially applied to ONS during Len CookLen Cook
Leonard Warren "Len" Cook, CBE is a professional statistician who was Government Statistician of New Zealand from 1992 to 2000 and National Statistician and Director of the Office for National Statistics, United Kingdom, and Registrar General for England and Wales from 2000 to...
's tenure as National Statistician but after Karen Dunnell succeeded to the post, ONS accelerated the policy of relocating the Office for National Statistics away from London and concentrating staff in its offices in Titchfield, near Southampton, and in Newport, South Wales, to which the ONS headquarters has moved. The announcement, in January 2007, of the almost complete closure of the ONS's London offices by 2010 reversed a decision to retain a sizeable office in the capital. This relocation policy, together with substantial expenditure cutbacks in recent government spending settlements, resulted in disquiet among London-based staff whose representatives reported morale problems and a high staff turnover rate among staff still in London. To set against the risks to data quality of any loss of expertise, especially among London-based staff who were unwilling to move, including analysts in National Accounts and in health statistics, Ms. Dunnell defended ONS implementation of government policy on civil service relocation. In the face of some Bank of England disquiet, reported in 2007 to the Treasury Select Committee, about risks to economic data quality, combined with opposition from London staff (including a lack of confidence in management expressed in a staff survey highlighted by staff unions), she asserted that the ONS Board had agreed a process of managed and gradual change to take account of these risks, building up expertise in Newport before shifting functions there. She also cited the benefits to the local economy, the skills of existing ONS staff in Newport and access to universities and other resources in the region as well as the benefits of operating key functions from a single location.
Other roles
Outside the OPCS, Karen Dunnell has been a member of the British Sociology Association and was on the committee of its BSA Medical Sociology Group. She later chaired the Society for Social Medicine. She is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, is a visiting professor at the London School of Hygiene and research associate at the London School of Economics. She has been elected to a second term as a Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.Karen Dunnell was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree by Middlesex University in July 2008, was appointed an Honorary Fellow of Cardiff University in July 2009 and was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
(DCB) in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in June 2009.
External links
- Dame Karen Dunnell, DCB at Debrett's People of Today