Culture

Unreliable evidence 47
The editor of the ippr’s publication, For Art’s Sake: Society and the
arts in the 21st Century, argues that the case for the arts simply needs
to be better made though a more robust ‘evidence’ base. 24
A major component of improving the data is the establishment of a
baseline understanding of the sector. From DCMS’s perspective,
baseline studies underpin the development, monitoring and assessment
of Public Service Agreement targets. 25 More generally, they
provide the basis for measuring change through comparable, if not
longitudinal, perspectives. However, to be effective, baseline data needs
to be as comprehensive as possible; as consistent as possible; and as
accurate as possible, as well as being fit for purpose. Yet, in many cases,
the available data are potentially of little use in constructing baselines:
they may be considered to be too poor, too limited or too general. In
some cases, data that has already been collected may simply be inaccessible.
This, for instance, is true of certain sets of publicly-funded data which
relate to museums and the arts. Detailed statistics from Target Group
Index (TGI), for example, are rarely made available because of the
copyright agreements to which its subscribers, Arts Council England and
MLA, are bound. 26 Indeed, much of the information collected by DCMS
from its sponsored museums is subject to confidentiality. It, therefore,
… never reaches the public domain, other than through piecemeal
release to answer parliamentary questions, for inclusion in quinquennial
reviews, or other ad hoc publication. 27
The lack of transparency in existing data that are available may also be
a problem. The format of DCMS’s annual resource accounts, which
are laid before Parliament, for instance, cost all DCMS activities