BLOG - Research Data Scotland (RDS) delivering for ADR Scotland: our story so far

Who are RDS and what is our role?

Founded by the Scottish Government in 2021, RDS was created to tackle some of the important challenges to provide faster, more efficient and safe access to current and wider Scottish public sector data, used by researchers for the public good. Since April 2023, RDS has received additional funding from the Scottish Government to specifically support the delivery of the ADR Scotland programme on practical data work around ingesting and updating data.  

RDS is currently working as a delivery body of ADR Scotland, supporting the ‘scaling up’ of research opportunities and ‘speeding up’ delivery of linkable research-ready datasets. This means making more administrative data available that is being used by more researchers, for more impactful outputs.  

As an organisation our ongoing aim is to create a sustainable system of access to public sector data about people, places and businesses over the longer term. Working with ADR Scotland this way means we can begin to bring greater efficiency to the system.  Collaboration is our most powerful tool to collectively deliver for Scotland.  

What RDS has achieved so far 

While ambitions are high in terms of our ADR Scotland work, it was important to us that we started by getting the basics right. This served us well, getting us into an operational space. We hired a fantastic team of data analysts, secured access to the data, and started working in ‘R’ so that the code was standardised across all datasets.  

• We are working towards reproducibility and automation where possible. In the ADR Scotland data ingest process, our analysts have been developing a Reproducible Analytical Pipeline (RAP). By identifying key steps that are common across different datasets, such as cleaning, indexing, and reporting, code is written in R that can be reused across other datasets with minimal human input. This improves efficiency and robustness and reduces the risk of errors. Investing time in setting this up early on has been worthwhile, as it has resulted in significant reductions in the time taken to process datasets. 

• As we continue to process more datasets, we will continue to learn where improved reproducibility and scalability are possible. We’re also looking to the future and have started testing out our Reproducible Analytical Pipeline for automating low-fidelity synthetic data — artificial data which contains no information about real people.

• RDS has set up the Scottish Data for Research Alliance, formed of key partners and ADR Scotland delivery bodies, to help improve the overall systems of accessing and processing administrative data ready for research in Scotland. 

• We have delivered new datasets that have been made available for research through ADR Scotland.  

• We were delighted that everyone’s hard work in ensuring that we collaborate with ADR Scotland delivery bodies was acknowledged when our partnership won ADR UK’s Outstanding Teamwork Award 2024. 

What comes next for RDS? 

Now that we have established a solid foundation for our work on ADR Scotland, we can progress with our work to both improve the current system and transform it for the future.  

Improvements are being made to how data is linked and stored, which will mean that health and non-health data can be more easily linked, making a wider range of datasets accessible to ADR Scotland. This methodology will be used for all datasets brought into the Scottish National Safe Haven regardless of the funding source, meaning that datasets funded through various sources will all benefit from each other. 

RDS is developing a roadmap for how this system transformation can start to be realised over the next three years. There are several key strands to this work to enable a more joined-up approach to data research in Scotland.  

This includes:

• Our Researcher Access Service (RAS), a new streamlined pathway that digitises the process for the first time, making it simpler to apply for Scottish public sector data for research.  
• Working both within and outside of the ADR Scotland programme, Research Data Scotland is ideally placed to move, along with our partners, to a system-wide planning and prioritisation approach.   
• It is through these close working relationships that we can deliver on our mission of making it faster and simpler to access public sector data for research.  

I’m looking forward to seeing us collectively rise to the challenge.  

ADR Scotland is a partnership between Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR) and the Scottish Government’s Data for Research, Analytical Platforms and Data Sharing Legislation Unit. You can learn more about ADR Scotland on their webpage.

If you wish to learn more about our role in ADR Scotland, please visit the RDS work and impact webpages. 

A version of this blog was originally published on RDS website, by Nora Cooke O’Dowd.