Summary of ADR Scotland Winter Partnership session

Around 50 people involved in the ESRC/UKRI funded partnership joined the event from across Scottish Government’s Data for Research Unit, the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR), Public Health Scotland (PHS), National Records of Scotland (NRS) and Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC).

A warm welcome!

ADR Scotland co-directors Professor Chris Dibben (Director of SCADR) and Roger Halliday (Chief Statistician, Scottish Government) opened the session, confirming the new funding secured until 2026 and sharing their hopes and ambitions for the next stage including exciting developments such as:

• developing a geospatial platform
• working on new datasets including on protected characteristics
• enhancing government-academic collaboration and analysis

We look forward to sharing more about these in the coming months!

Knowledge Exchange

We were delighted to be joined by two of our ADR Scotland ambassadors - Mark McAteer, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Neil White, Health and Social Care Analysis, Scottish Government - who shared their thoughts on data priorities and potential collaborations for the future.

We also heard from our researcher, Michelle Jamieson, around the exciting new work looking at Nursing and Midwifery Council data to better understand the nursing workforce, as well as Serena Pattaro who presented emerging findings from our Covid-19 risk factors project, with the first Data Insights from this coming soon.

Further talks were then given on a range of topics including: Darren Lightfoot on SafePods and their current expansion across the UK to enhance secure data access (please visit the SafePods website for more information) and David Grzybowski from Scottish Government on developments around information governance.

Networking 

Many thanks to all those who attended and took part. It was a great opportunity to network with colleagues across the partnership and to welcome new staff - and the quiz certainly allowed us to enjoy some early festive fun and cheer! We look forward to holding a similar session again next year.