Event Details

Title: Opening up access to administrative data for research: ESRC’s ADR UK programme

Summary: ESRC’s ADR UK programme is a partnership of government and academic groups across all four UK nations, led by ESRC. This programme is creating linked research datasets from administrative sources, making these available to researchers through the network of ADR UK Trusted Research Environments, and delivering research to meet government priorities for evidence. ADR UK ran as a pilot phase from 2018 to 2021, during which we have 1000s of researchers successfully accessing our data across the four nations of the UK. In collaboration with ONS (ADR UK’s major data infrastructure partner), ADR UK has also had real success in engaging with Whitehall departments. This means ADR UK is supporting not only the three devolved nations to meet their research needs, but also working collaboratively with UK Government departments to do the same. As a result these successes, ADR UK has been able to secure long-term funding through to 2026.

Administrative data is information collected by administrative systems across civil and public services. Although not generally collected for research purposes, it can be extremely valuable if used in this way, because it has such broad coverage of the population. ADR UK has worked with data owners across the UK to create linked administrative datasets covering a wide range of research themes, and all of this is accessible for research by people working within government as well as outside. Our remit not only to create linked administrative data assets and make these available to researchers, but to build relationships between academic researchers and government, to ensure the resulting research is useful to data owners and policy makers. This includes assessing the potential for carrying out evaluations of trials and policies, and facilitating those evaluations to be carried out.

Emma will highlight some of the flagship linked datasets that are now available to researchers across the UK, and illustrate the type of research that is now being carried out using them. These linked datasets cover themes from education outcomes, wage and employment, crime and justice, looked after children and the environment, with many more in the pipeline.

Biography: Dr Emma Gordon is Director of the ADR UK Strategic Hub and Director of ADR England. She is responsible for setting the strategic direction for the programme, leading on the coordination of the partnership and engagement with senior stakeholders, to improve access and analysis of administrative data to inform policy decisions. She is also part of the ADR UK Leadership Committee. Emma joined ADR UK from HM Treasury, where she led the team supporting government economists and social researchers across government. Prior to this, Emma was Head of Health Analysis at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and at the start of her career was a post-doctoral researcher on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.