Recipient organisationScottish GovernmentSource-published name: Scottish Government
Funding£2.1M
PeriodMar 2021 — Mar 2022
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
Scotland’s government is linking together its own administrative records—tax, health, education, housing, and welfare data—so accredited researchers can analyse them as a single, secure resource. This matters because government departments typically hold their data in separate silos. A child’s school attendance, family income, and later health outcomes, for example, cannot currently be studied together. That makes it hard to answer questions such as whether a particular policy on free school meals actually reduces hospital admissions years later, or how housing support affects employment. The project removes those barriers by creating a legal and technical infrastructure for safe data linkage. If successful, the work will let policymakers test the real-world effects of social and economic policies using evidence from millions of actual records, not small-scale surveys or models. That could improve decisions on poverty, fair work, lifelong wellbeing, and community safety across Scotland. The public rarely sees this infrastructure, but it quietly shapes how effectively tax money is spent and whether policies actually improve lives.
View original technical description
ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK) is a partnership transforming the way researchers access the UK’s wealth of public sector data, to enable better informed policy decisions that improve people’s lives. By linking together data held by different parts of government, and by facilitating safe and secure access for accredited researchers to these newly joined-up data sets, ADR UK is creating a sustainable body of knowledge about how our society and economy function – tailored to give decision makers the answers they need to solve important policy questions. ADR UK is made up of three national partnerships (ADR Scotland, ADR Wales, and ADR NI) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which ensures data provided by UK government bodies is accessed by researchers in a safe and secure form with minimal risk to data holders or the public. The partnership is coordinated by a UK-wide Strategic Hub, which also promotes the benefits of administrative data research to the public and the wider research community, engages with UK government to secure access to data, and manages a dedicated research budget. ADR UK is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation. To find out more, visit adruk.org or follow @ADR_UK on Twitter. Scottish Government receives funding as part of ADR Scotland (Administrative Data Research Scotland), a partnership combining specialists in the Scottish Government’s Data Sharing and Linkage Unit with the expertise of academic researchers at the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research. Together they are transforming how public sector data in Scotland is curated, accessed and explored, so it can deliver its full potential for policymakers and for the public. ADR Scotland is linking administrative data sets and conducting research on a suite of critical issues in Scotland, from health and social care to lifelong wellbeing, and from poverty and fair work to building safer communities. The Scottish Government team brings proven experience in managing data-sharing and linkage projects, access to and understanding of policymakers in government, expertise in information governance and the application of the Digital Economy Act. It is committed to taking forward a programme of work to develop a new infrastructure to support administrative data research.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know