Secure Data Service

For more than 40 years the UK Data Archive has been acquiring, curating and delivering high-quality data to academic researchers.

Over the decades data technology has changed dramatically, along with the institutional, philosophical and legal frameworks surrounding it.

Data services are now at a crossroad. The possibilities for innovative cross-disciplinary science represented by data harvesting, merging, mashing, mining and mapping in a shared technological environment are expanding. The opportunity for extracting maximum value out of research data is within reach.

At the same time there are rising concerns about safeguarding personal data. Definitions of what constitutes anonymous, non-disclosive and non-sensitive data about individual people have necessarily changed.

New government standards for statistical disclosure control have also led to a significant reduction of detail in social datasets previously released for scientific use under a standard end user license. And yet the Statistics and Registration Act of 2007 has opened access to even more sensitive and disclosive personal data to those who are deemed 'approved researchers.'

In this environment, access to data is moving to the far ends of a spectrum, with freely available (but perhaps un-detailed) data at one end and tightly controlled data that's potentially disclosive or sensitive at the other.

A new solution

In 2008 the UK Data Archive responded to the situation by establishing and piloting the Secure Data Service. The service was officially launched in March 2011. Its primary purpose is to facilitate secure research access to detailed microdata in danger of being only available onsite at data producers' organisations - or not at all. The service is currently available to UK academics and is also a lead partner in the Data without Boundaries project which is opening up access to data across Europe.

The Secure Data Service benefits from the UK Data Archive's expertise and hard-earned reputation in all aspects of social science research data. It also benefits from a close alliance with the Economic and Social Data Service, the Archive's flagship data service. The service works closely with the Office for National Statistics  Virtual Microdata Laboratory and has received the support and advice of other research data centres, such as the National Opinion Research Center Data Enclave.

The Secure Data Service is also based at the UK Data Archive, located on the campus of the University of Essex, one of the UK's leading social science universities.