Opening up access to administrative data for research: five years of ESRC’s ADR UK programme
Emma Gordon, Director, ADR UK programme, ESRC

ESRC’s ADR UK programme is a partnership of government and academic groups across all four UK nations, led by ESRC. This programme is creating linked research datasets from administrative sources, making these available to researchers through the network of ADR UK Trusted Research Environments, and delivering research to meet government priorities for evidence. ADR UK ran as a pilot phase from 2018 to 2021, during which we have 1000s of researchers successfully accessing our data across the four nations of the UK. In collaboration with ONS (ADR UK’s major data infrastructure partner), ADR UK has also had real success in engaging with Whitehall departments. This means ADR UK is supporting not only the three devolved nations to meet their research needs, but also working collaboratively with UK Government departments to do the same. It is because of all these successes that ADR UK has been able to secure long-term funding through to 2026. 
Administrative data is information collected by administrative systems across civil and public services. Although not generally collected for research purposes, it can be extremely valuable if used in this way, because it has such broad coverage of the population. ADR UK has worked with data owners across the UK to create linked administrative datasets covering a wide range of research themes, and all of this is accessible for research by people working within government as well as outside. Our remit not only to create linked administrative data assets and make these available to researchers, but to build relationships between academic researchers and government, to ensure the resulting research is useful to data owners and policy makers. This includes assessing the potential for carrying out evaluations of trials and policies, and facilitating those evaluations to be carried out.

Across ADR UK, we are always looking at ways we can improve researcher’s experience of accessing linked administrative datasets. Working in partnership with ONS, both as ADR UK’s major data infrastructure partner and also lead for the Integrated Data Service, there will be a range of improvements that will be delivered to the externally-funded service through this partnership, in terms of functionality, data availability and process. Emma will touch on some of these in her presentation, with Alison going into more detail in her talk.


Integrated Data Service (IDS): Cutting through complexity with improved access to data

You’re invited to join James Hartley-Binns, Head of Engagement for the Integrated Data Service​ and Jason Yaxley, Integrated Data Programme Director, who will showcase the Integrated Data Service (IDS) – an exciting government-wide initiative, creating a step change in the way data about our society and economy are made available for vital research and decision making in the UK. 

(IDS) will bring together data, analysis and domain expertise with modern data infrastructure and cutting-edge methods to shine a light on some of the biggest issues facing society and the economy. It engenders a new culture of data sharing, with analysts from across Government and wider communities working together. Importantly the service securely enables co-ordinated access to a range of high-quality data. The aim is to bring together ready-to-use data, to enable faster and wider collaborative analysis, based on sound evidence, which will improve the lives of UK citizens.

IDS is a key enabler of the Government’s National Data Strategy and Modernisation agenda, and will provide improved forms of data, alongside analytical and visualisation tools, in a secure multi-cloud infrastructure. The work of IDS also supports the governments ambition of transforming for a digital future from 2022 and beyond. While the work of IDS will focus on realising benefits such as informing targeted policy interventions, offering social benefits though outputs, increasing a culture of analytical collaboration that builds trusts in statistics, and bringing together diverse datasets. 
 

James Hartley-Binns and Jason Yaxley, Office for National Statistics
Emma Gordon, Director, ADR UK programme, ESRC