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The UK's largest digital collection of social sciences and population research data

Information governance

As lead organisation of the UK Data Service, we advise on data governance, ethics and confidentiality, contributing to government White Papers and advising on the Digital Economy Act 2017.

Future proofing

We respond to trends and users’ demands, adapting to allow access to new and novel forms of data – and to the transition of ‘whole-study’ data and metadata to more granular ‘data products’, such as microdata variables.

Our work on the Smart Energy Research Lab and our Data Service as a Platform is giving us the technical capacity to link datasets from outside social science with those held in the Archive.

Multi-disciplinary research is a key aim of UK Research and Innovation, and there are enormous opportunities in combining social science data with biomedical, household energy research, central and local government administrative data assets, and in using AI to index and rapidly locate data.

Research and development

We receive grants from organisations such as the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Jisc and the European Union (EU) to help us pursue innovative work.

Find out more about our R&D in data management.