ADR Northern Ireland

ADR Northern Ireland (NI) is looking forward to an exciting year ahead. The team’s increasing ambition is to contribute to areas of policy overlap through increasing use of linked administrative data, for example, between criminal justice and housing.  

ADR NI will continue to bring new datasets on board, forging closer trust and understanding with data custodians across government. Over the next year, they will extend the current portfolio of themed datasets. The Educational Outcomes Linkage will be extended to include additional years of secondary level data, as well as data on tertiary education. New datasets will be made available including Business Data for Research, the Cross-Government Income administrative dataset and Administrative Data | Agricultural Research Collection, alongside work beginning to capitalise on the uniquely rich data from Census 2021.   

The reshaping of the health data landscape and the formation of the Data Institute should streamline access to health data for all accredited researchers. Forthcoming guidelines for legislation on secondary uses of data aim to allow health data to be linked to other datasets, improving ADR NI’s ability to develop policy-relevant research responding to crucial issues in society.  

The team will also place a renewed emphasis on public and policy engagement to shape their work. They will continue to build awareness and understanding among a range of stakeholders and data contributors of the value of data for innovation and public benefit.   

ADR NI is committed to facilitating remote access so that a greater number of researchers from across the UK can have access to their rich data sources, and so contribute to policy development and evaluation.