Shaping Scotland's future using data for research to benefit the public

Session Summary

In this interactive workshop, you'll explore how public sector data is collected and used about people across Scotland—and how it can be used to shape better policies and improve lives. Through real-world and mock examples and group discussion, we’ll examine both the benefits and risks of using public sector data in decision-making.

Participants will actively contribute to shaping Research Data Scotland’s evolving criteria on 'public good' in the context of data use. By the end, you’ll not only have deepened your understanding of public sector data, you’ll have also played a role in helping us to create public good criteria for data access. 

Session Description

Throughout a person's lifetime, data is collected about them. This is called administrative data. It's information generated for the day-to-day running of organisations, such as the NHS, government, and local councils. The information held, might include data about your health, education, tax records and more. This information can be used for research, with the identifying information removed. This is called de-identified data.

During this session, we will introduce you to administrative data with some fun activities to explore what data is collected about you, how it's de-identified, and how it can be used in research. 

After you are familiar with the concept we will dig into the deeper questions that we'd like your support with. At Research Data Scotland, we have a Researcher Access Service that researchers can use to gain access to data. To be approved for access, researchers have to justify how their research will benefit the public. To do so, we have a set of public good criteria to evaluate applications. However, these criteria are very much health focused, and we would like your input to adapt them to encompass other types of data access, such as information about education, jobs, and housing.

During this session, you will see examples of what has been approved in the past and explore mock examples of how data may be used in future. You will determine the risks and benefits of such work which will help develop the existing public good criteria to make it more suitable to these new types of data we hope to make available. 

After this session, you will have helped to shape Research Data Scotland's Public Good criteria, which will be used by our Public Impact Advisory Group to review applications to our Researcher Access Service. We will get in touch with you after the session to let you know how your feedback has been incorporated. You will also be given the options to hear about future involvement opportunities from us, if you are interested.

Additional Information

This event is run by Research Data Scotland in collaboration with and as part of the Community Knowledge Matters Gathering on Tuesday 11 November. For the full programme please see In Person Gathering 2025 — Community Knowledge Matters.