Connect 4: improving data access between the four UK nations

The Connect 4 project brings together the Integrated Data Service (IDS, which has the Office for National Statistics as its lead delivery partner), National Records of Scotland (NRS), Public Health Scotland (PHS), and Research Data Scotland (RDS). 

Identifying barriers to research

Data collected and stored by public organisations such as government departments often contains sensitive information about UK citizens and businesses. Since the Digital Economy Act of 2017, progress has been made to enable accredited researchers to safely and securely access data to perform studies that are of public benefit. 

These researchers access data by submitting their request to Trusted Research Environments (TREs), which is currently the most secure way to handle sensitive data. However, this process can take a long time and is often overly complicated and confusing.

The process can be particularly challenging when researchers want to access and link multiple datasets together, or access data that involves more than one TRE. Governance policies across TREs vary and often are not compatible, requiring different application procedures, which slows down access to data and can delay important research.

A roadmap towards simplified data access 

Connect 4 aims to create a roadmap to outline how a researcher can discover, apply for, and analyse data held at one of the UK’s four national TREs through a single front door.

The roadmap will recommend how processes, policies and procedures might be standardised and point to new and innovative technologies and methods that would enable researchers to analyse data combined from more than one organisation. 

Jen Muir, Senior Data Analyst at RDS, said: “The roadmap will be the first step in delivering federated data access across the UK’s four nations. RDS is leading on describing a shared model that the UK national TREs could adopt to provide a sustainable route for federated data access for research, and an information governance (IG) framework to support and enable the model with recommendations for policies across the TREs. These work packages will help provide clarity for researchers working across the system and requesting safe and secure access to data."

EPCC's role

In addition to being the overall lead for the Connect 4 project, EPCC is also leading two tasks within it. The project team has identified a barrier when researchers seek data to process towards their research hypothesis: they cannot see these datasets and, based on free text metadata descriptions of these datasets alone, cannot assess whether a combination is feasible or leads to a sensible analysis.

To address this, as part of the Connect 4 project the team will develop software that automatically creates a rich metadata catalogue for specific datasets in TREs, and agree enhanced metadata standards to help researchers understand whether they could perform an analysis if they had access to the data. 

EPCC will also lead on a trial project requiring linked data across organisations, with an overall intention to enable new policy-relevant insights whilst laying the path for ongoing federation across UK national TREs.

Carmen Amador, Senior Assistant Statistician at NRS, said: “We’re delighted to be involved with the Connect 4 project. Making Scottish data available for research is really important, and this project is a step towards being able to connect that data to the rest of the UK.”

PHS Head of Data and Modelling Services, Carole Morris, said: “The creation of a single front door for accessing data held in TREs across the four nations would enable researchers to generate deeper insights to benefit people living in Scotland. The Connect 4 project is a valuable milestone towards this, and I’m excited to see how the project progresses.”

Emily Symmons, Head of Relationships, IDS, said: “I’m proud to be working on the Connect 4 project towards a standardised approach to accessing data across the UK. We will work across each of the project’s workstreams, and we’re pleased to be collaborating with the other organisations towards this shared goal.”

Connect 4 is a one-year project, running from April 2024 to March 2025. It is funded, to the value of £484,730 by the Economic and Social Research Council, under the “Future data services: pilots to enhance data services for the future” programme (ES/Z502972/1).

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