Looking forward
ADR UK will continue progress towards meeting our objectives in the final years of our current funding period, which runs until 2026. Activities will remain aligned to our national partnership strategies, which lay out how we will achieve our shared aims.
Our aims
- Building trust and sustainability
ADR UK is working to implement a national strategic focus on addressing major societal challenges through administrative data research. This means gaining support throughout government for securely sharing data to create a sustainable research resource.
- Supporting research for public good
ADR UK is committed to achieving measurable public good. This means demonstrable impact arising from administrative data research that addresses major societal challenges.
- Improving data access for research
ADR UK is working to improve the availability, accessibility and long-term sustainability of high-quality administrative data, which is suitable for public good research.
- Providing a seamless researcher service
ADR UK is committed to ensuring transparent, coordinated, secure and timely access to administrative data and support services for the wider research community.
ADR UK has commissioned an externally-delivered evaluation of the progress of the programme, to assess the impact and economic benefits of our work across the partnership. This will be completed in October, to inform our business case for future funding.
ADR UK will continue to work closely with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in ensuring a smooth transition from the ONS Secure Research Service to the Integrated Data Service, ensuring this service meets the continued needs of external researchers going forward. In the longer term, ADR UK remains committed to its mission of transforming the way researchers access the UK’s wealth of public sector data, and will continue to make the case for funding that supports this.
With a growing body of research insights across our partnership, ADR UK will continue working to translate these into evidence-informed improvements to policy and practice. ADR UK is partnering with the National Centre for Social Research to produce a report summarising the evidence on the experiences of young people in and after leaving social care, with the ambition to stimulate political uptake of the research. Connecting Society, ADR UK’s new podcast, will launch later this year, showcasing the potential benefits of administrative data research to policymakers and the public alike.
ADR UK will continue to collaborate with partners across the research sector to advance the use of public data for the public good. We look forward to supporting Phase 2 of the DARE UK (Data and Analytics Research Environments UK) programme, which will focus on testing the recommendations from Phase 1 and building on the work the programme has delivered to date.
As a core funder, ADR UK will also continue to support and contribute to the Public Engagement in Data Research Initiative in collaboration with partners. We have plans to engage with the research community and advocate for the use of administrative data at sector-wide events, including the British Society of Population Studies, the Royal Statistical Society, and the International Population Data Linkage Network conferences. As ever in a fast-developing field, we look forward to engaging across the sector to support and collaborate with projects breaking new ground to solve pressing challenges.
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ADR England
The year ahead promises further development across the ADR England portfolio, with this year’s activities coming into fruition. The Strategic Hub team looks forward to continuing to support more ADR UK Research Fellows than ever before in using ADR England flagship datasets, sharing their findings and maximising their impact. The team will also continue to support the progress of the ADR England research-ready data projects, as they generate outputs that enrich the landscape of administrative data available to accredited researchers.
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ADR Northern Ireland
ADR Northern Ireland is looking forward to an exciting year ahead. The partnership will be refreshing its overall strategy to ensure ADR NI is in the best possible position to deliver the benefits of research using linked administrative data, as well as starting to plan for the next investment phase.
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ADR Scotland
During the forthcoming year, ADR Scotland has ambitious plans to ingest and update further datasets - including data from outside the Scottish Government. ADR Scotland plans to make these datasets securely available for approved researchers to apply to access in the Scottish National Safe Haven. The team will also be running events and developing materials to support these datasets and their wider use.
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ADR Wales
ADR Wales is pleased to be hosting the next ADR UK Conference in the autumn of 2025. The team looks forward to welcoming colleagues from across the UK and further afield to Cardiff. The scientific programme, due to be announced in late 2024, promises to be robust and expansive. The event will offer opportunities for involvement to people at all career stages.
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ONS
It’s an exciting time for the ONS as the Secure Research Service continues to deliver secure access to a wealth of de-identified, unpublished data for accredited researchers. Alongside this, the ONS continues as the lead delivery partner of the Integrated Data Service. In collaboration with ADR UK, partners across government and the wider research community, the Integrated Data Service is creating a step change in the way that data about our society and economy are made available for vital research and decision making in the UK.