Recipient organisationScottish GovernmentSource-published name: Scottish Government
Funding£8.9M
PeriodMar 2022 — Mar 2026
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
Scotland’s government is linking its own administrative datasets—records on health, social care, poverty, employment, and community safety—so accredited researchers can securely access joined-up information that was previously scattered across separate departments. This matters because policymakers currently lack a clear, evidence-based picture of how different parts of people’s lives interact. A child’s educational outcomes, for example, may be tied to housing conditions or parental employment, but those datasets rarely speak to each other. Without linked data, decisions about public spending or service design are made partly in the dark. If ADR Scotland succeeds, the Scottish Government will have a sustainable infrastructure for answering critical policy questions—such as how to reduce poverty or improve lifelong wellbeing—using real-world evidence rather than assumptions. The impact is on the systems that quietly shape daily life: social care provision, fair work policies, and community safety programmes. The project does not produce immediate breakthroughs; it builds the data architecture that makes better-informed decisions possible over the long term.
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.
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