Karen Dunnell Totally Explained

Everything about Karen Dunnell totally explained

Karen Hope Dunnell (born 16 June 1946) has been National Statistician, Registrar General and Director of the Office for National Statistics of the United Kingdom since 1 September, 2005.

Background

Born Karen Williamson in Los Angeles, USA, she moved to Britain when she was a young child and was educated at Maidstone Grammar School for Girls and Bedford College, London. Her father was a US serviceman during World War II 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 and has a home in the Var in SE 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, London, 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,. This established a measure of morbidity and the relationship between medicines acquired through the NHS and over-the-counter. Soon afterwards, Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, 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. Dunnell will, from April 2008, be accountable to Parliament via a Statistics Board, to be known as the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), rather than, as previously, via a Treasury minister.
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 Cook'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 have 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 are unwilling to move, including analysts in National Accounts and in health statistics, Ms. Dunnell has 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 London staff opposition (including a lack of confidence in management expressed in a staff survey highlighted by staff unions), she's asserted that the ONS Board has agreed a process of managed and gradual change to take account of these risks, building up expertise in Newport before shifting functions there. She has 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 also been a Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Karen Dunnell'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://karen_dunnell.totallyexplained.com">Karen Dunnell Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.