Committee Members

Professor Paul Boyle (Chair)

Siobhan Carey (Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency) Chris Dibben (Independent member)

Tricia Dodd (Independent member) Kevin Fletcher (HMRC)

Andrew Garrett (Independent member)

Emma Gordon) (UK Research and Innovation) Sarah Henry (ONS)

Glyn Jones (Welsh Government)

Sarah Matthieson (Independent member) Neil McIvor (Department for Education)

1.            Minutes from previous meeting

1.1 Members approved the minutes of the sixth meeting of the Research Accreditation

2.            Accrediting Approved Researchers under the DEA

2.1 The Research Accreditation Panel approved the proposal that ONS automatically accredit current Approved Researchers as Digital Economy Act (DEA) accredited researchers subject to ONS confirming they would no longer grant Approved Researcher status to researchers and would instead ask future researchers to go through the DEA accreditation

ACTION: ONS Research Support and Data Access were asked to communicate this decision to Approved Researchers.

ACTION: ONS to confirm that they will no longer grant Approved Researcher status to researchers and will instead ask future researchers to go through the DEA accreditation process.

3.          Precedent Process

3.1 The Research Accreditation Panel agreed with the proposal to accredit projects by precedent. The Panel recognised that there was good evidence of a tried and tested process for managing research project precedents within ONS and the Statistics Authority. However, it was suggested that the Panel should review the first DEA projects to get a feel for what is coming through and then can move to using precedents based on work approved by the Research Accreditation Panel. It was also suggested that any precedent process should be regularly reviewed.

ACTION: The Secretariat to ensure that all project applications are reviewed by the Research Accreditation Panel until an appropriate number of precedents have been built up.

4.          Data sources catalogue

4.1 The  Research  Accreditation  Panel  was  pleased  to  see  departments  making  data available. The following points were raised:

i. It was suggested that it was important that the availability of this data is effectively communicated to the research community so that it can be fully

ii. Making the data available was only part of the process and work needs to focus on getting this data used for research for the public

iii. The Research Accreditation Panel asked ONS Research Support and Data Access to provide information on what data in the data catalogue was available prior to the Research Strand of the Digital Economy

iv. There is potential to regularly combine certain datasets that would increase the use of this data.

ACTION: ONS Research Support and Data Access to provide information on how much of the data in the data catalogue was available prior to the Research Strand of the Digital Economy Act at the next meeting.