... and what I learned along the way.
I was part of a cross-government team that recently published an updated version of the AQuA (Analytical Quality Assurance) Book. This is guidance that sets out principles to help people across government design, produce and communicate quality analysis to support better decisions. The previous version was released 10 years ago so there was a lot to update.
As an actuary at the Government Actuary’s Department (GAD), the AQuA book aims of ensuring high quality analysis, and transparency around assumptions and uncertainty align well with my day-to-day work.
The team of 15 contributors set out to make the guidance clearer, more practical, and easier to use across departments and beyond.
Why the AQuA Book matters
Good decisions depend on good analysis. Shared principles that work across government help ensure policy, operations, and spending choices are informed and proportionate.
A lot of analysis, whether actuarial or not, is full of uncertainty, dependency, and long-term risk. The hardest part is often not the maths but the explanation.
It’s important to give the audience enough caveats to be honest but not too much that it becomes confusing. The AQuA book helps by giving a shared, proportionate way to do this.
What we produced and what has changed
The refreshed AQuA book is structured around the analytical lifecycle:
- engagement and scoping
- design
- analysis
- delivery, communication and sign-off
The roles and responsibilities and assurance activities of each stage are set out, along with new sections on uncertainty and “black box” models. There are additional chapters covering broad themes such as proportionality and culture.
The resources section collates information referred to through the book, including a link to the GAD webpage, which sets out the areas where we work, alongside a reminder that GAD can provide expert quality assurance reviews of models across the public sector.
A cross-government effort
This was a team effort across government’s Analysis Function, bringing together statisticians, economists, data scientists, operational researchers, and actuaries.
The variety of expertise increased peer challenge, reduced blind spots, and led to examples that feel real to users across government.
Working with such a varied team introduced me to different ways of working and the wide variety of analysis produced across government. Everyone was fitting in the work alongside their day job, but the whole team was very mindful of this and so it didn’t feel onerous to be involved.
Tools and ways of working
Once the structure of the updated book was agreed, each chapter was allocated a lead author and reviewer. The result was quite a mix of writing styles, due to the number of authors. A smaller group (me and 3 others) carried out the editing stage, to make it easier to manage consistency.
At this point, drafting was transferred from Word to Quarto and changes were managed through GitHub. This allowed us to publish the finished AQuA book as HTML pages which are easier to navigate and more accessible than a PDF.
It also allowed us to track suggestions and edits, as well as work on different versions of the document in parallel and easily merge them later.
I’ve previously used GitHub for coding projects, but not for drafting documents. I’d recommend it for large, multi-author projects.
Things we would have done differently
Technology, in particular Large Language Models, has improved significantly since we began the project.
If starting again now, we would use AI to speed up editing, especially for consistency of tone and definitions across chapters. Team members’ varied expertise would still set the content, but AI could reduce the time spent aligning style.
Writing so everyone can understand
Over my career, most of my writing has been for other actuaries or insurance professionals. One skill I developed during the project is writing for a more varied audience. I initially thought simplifying the language may reduce some of the precision of meaning but found the opposite to be true. I’m aiming to continue using the simplest words possible in my technical communications.
Next steps
Read and use the AQuA Book in your next project. If you have comments or suggestions about the content of the AQuA Book or how it might be improved, email analysis.function@ons.gov.uk with ‘AQuA Book’ in the subject.
Disclaimer
The views expressed are the author’s own and the opinions in this blog post are not intended to provide specific advice. For our full disclaimer, please see the About this blog page.