John Sanderson, Deputy Director of the UK Data Service, discusses how the infrastructure of the Service increases the time researchers can spend analysing data versus finding and preparing it.
In 2014, when I first came to work at the UK Data Archive, I felt like the proverbial kid in a sweet shop. The first 10 years of my career had largely been spent working with data in multi-agency local government and policing contexts, producing analytical reports and setting up performance reporting.
A maxim I’d picked up early from colleagues who had been in post longer was that “we spend 90% of our time getting hold of the data and getting it ready to work with, and 10% actually doing analysis!” So the idea of a maintained depository of well-curated, research-ready, datasets was a dream I’d never dared consider could be reality….
Now, as Deputy Director for the UK Data Service, my main concern is that we run the most effective service we can, for everyone involved in the data life cycle. To do that we have to collaborate effectively both as a range of core delivery partners and with a myriad of external stakeholders, and ensure our offering keeps pace with the rapidly changing world we live in.
In that context it is easy to overlook the massive achievement that the existence of the UK Data Service represents.
The infrastructure behind impact
A researcher can arrive at a single front door, the UK Data Service website, and is presented with our Data Catalogue. With well-curated metadata for each of the 10,000+ studies in our collection, they can use a range of search techniques to discover the wealth of datasets we hold. Alongside each of these resources is relevant documentation, ranging from data dictionaries and variable lists to comprehensive user guides.
As a result of our tiered access arrangements there are datasets available under a simple End User Licence. They are quickly available for download and already aggregated in ways that mean the researcher doesn’t need to worry about whether or not their results are safe to share with the wider world.
There are also datasets that are more detailed, allowing for more sophisticated or nuanced analysis. For these datasets, there are consistent and repeatable pathways for seeking permission to use the data, along with clear supporting information about the conditions of use and how to adhere to them.
And for the datasets so detailed that they constitute personal data, and so have to be handled with great care, the UK Data Service provides an entire analytical environment – SecureLab. This gives researchers a remotely accessible service with a set of working processes tailored to remove the risks in handling such detailed data, such as inadvertently producing results which identify individuals or allowing inappropriate access to the data itself.
Crucially, the standardised processes and consistent underpinning frameworks of data curation, storage and access mean that this pathway of finding and accessing data can be iterated over and over again. And it is, with tens of thousands of researchers using the UK Data Service each year.
On average, every two to three minutes, at all hours of the day and all year round, researchers access data from UK Data Service. Data neatly packaged and ready to use, which allows the 90/10 split of finding, accessing and preparing data vs actually analysing it that I experienced as a researcher to be turned on it’s head….
What’s next?
Looking into the future, the UK Data Service will always work hard to meet the needs of researchers who want to utilise more varied data from increasingly different sources.
We will continue doing this by further reducing the barriers to finding, accessing and using data and by harnessing the latest computational capabilities. This will be made possible by building on the solid, wide reaching base we have established over many years – a large scale, foundational service that already delivers huge volumes of data to data users at every stage of their career.
About the author
John Sanderson is the Deputy Director for the UK Data Service.
Based at the UK Data Archive, John supports the Director with the operational delivery of the UK Data Service. He has responsibility for implementing the UK Data Service Delivery Plan and enabling effective working across the five partners who make up the Service.
Over the last decade John has worked at the University of Essex, in various roles for the Archive and within the Research Enterprise Office on large knowledge exchange and impact programmes. Before joining the University of Essex in 2014, he worked for over a decade in data research focused roles in police forces and local authorities.
To find out more about John’s work, connect with him on LinkedIn.
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