Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Neville-Rolfe on 19 February (HL2184), how many of the 20 Integrated Data Service projects and 600 Secure Research Service projects referred to in that answer have a lead researcher whose primary affiliation is given as (1) academic, (2) central government, (3) commercial, (4) local government, (5) non-commercial, and (6) the Office for National Statistics.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. A response to the noble Lord’s Parliamentary Question of 14 March is below and attached.

The Lord Clement-Jones CBE

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

22 March 2024

Dear Lord Clement-Jones

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Neville-Rolfe on 19 February (HL2184), how many of the 20 Integrated Data Service (IDS) projects and 600 Secure Research Service (SRS) projects referred to in that answer have a lead researcher whose primary affiliation is given as (1) academic, (2) central government, (3) commercial, (4) local government, (5) non-commercial, and (6) the Office for National Statistics (ONS) (HL3276).

1. Of the monthly average of 600 projects running in the SRS during 2023, 382 were led by those affiliated with the academic community. There were no academic lead projects within the Integrated Data Service for the same period.

2. For the same period, the number of projects led by central government on the SRS was 43; these include agencies, public bodies, devolved administrations, ministerial and non-ministerial and public research bodies. The number of central government lead projects on the IDS was 10.

3. The number of commercial lead projects on SRS projects was 81; these include private sector organisations, primarily think tanks and consultancies. There were no lead researchers within this affiliation attached to the 20 IDS projects.

4. The number of local government affiliated lead projects in SRS was 6. There were no lead researchers within this affiliation attached to the 20 IDS projects.

5. The number of non-commercial affiliated lead projects in SRS was 69; these include those categorised as third sector/voluntary. There were no lead researchers within this affiliation attached to the 20 IDS projects.

6. The number of Office for National Statistics lead researchers on SRS projects was 19. The subsequent number for the 20 IDS projects was 10.

We have recently communicated the timetable for the transition to IDS to our SRS users and over the next year, the IDS will scale its data at pace and onboard a range of users from across all the aforementioned user groups in SRS, leading to a more varied distribution of user types accessing projects on the IDS. The IDS has an ever-growing list of prospective use cases that it will onboard throughout 2024 as the service scales its data catalogue and analytical tooling capabilities.

In light of your interest in the IDS and to provide additional context around the SRS and IDS figures in this and our previous responses, I would like to personally offer our team to come and showcase the service, discuss future prospects around the SRS and IDS and answer any further questions you have. We would be delighted to attend a location at your convenience, if this is an attractive proposition.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Ian Diamond