Annex D: Glossary of terms

Cloud-native

Cloud-native is the software approach of building, deploying and managing modern applications in cloud computing environments. Modern companies want to build highly scalable, flexible and resilient applications that they can update quickly to meet customer demands.

Data Zone

A Data Zone (DZ) is a unit of population in Scotland of 500 to 1,000 household residents.

Digital Economy Act

This is an act of Parliament allows data sharing between government departments in order to provide ‘Digital Government’.

Efficiency framework

The framework that the ONS uses to provide guidance and governance for the identification, planning, monitoring and delivery of efficiencies.

Geographical distribution

Statement of the distribution of species, demographic groups by country and / or region.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Gross domestic product is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is most often used by the government of a single country to measure its economic health.

Gross Value Added (GVA)

Gross value added (GVA) is an economic productivity metric that measures the contribution of a corporate subsidiary, company, or municipality to an economy, producer, sector, or region. GVA is the output of the country less the intermediate consumption, which is the difference between gross output and net output.

Levelling Up

Levelling up is a political policy that aims to reduce the imbalances, primarily economic, between areas and social groups across the United Kingdom without acting to the detriment of prosperous areas.

Lower Layer Super Output Areas

A Lower layer Super Output Area (LSOA) is a unit of population in England and Wales 1,000 to 3,000 people (400 to 1,200 households).

Net Zero

Net zero refers to a government commitment to ensure the UK reduces its greenhouse gas emissions by 100% from 1990 levels by 2050.

BETA maturity phase

Beta refers to a software development stage. The Beta maturity phase for a software, feature, or product begins when the product, feature, or software is complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs.

Spending Review

A Spending Review is the governmental process in which departments bid to secure their financial budgets from HM Treasury.

Subnational

A region or group within a nation.

Super Output Areas

Super Output Areas (SOA) is a unit of population in Northern Ireland of 300 to 6,000 people.

Trusted Research Environment

A TRE or Trusted Research Environment is a research facility (normally accredited under the Digital Economy Act) that provides secure and lawful access to unpublished and de-identified data for analytical research. To ensure safe use of data that’s made available, TREs operate under the ‘5 Safes Framework’ (About the Secure Research Service – Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk))