It’s Love Data Week 12-16 February, and we’re marking it by looking at some of the ways the UK Data Service are helping to make possible the research which shapes our world and our understanding of it.
This year, there are four topics designed to raise awareness of what we and organisations around the world do to preserve, manage, share and reuse data for research:
Stories about data
In this category, we’re looking at how we deal with data – and specifically, data which can tell us about our future energy needs. For example, in November, the UK Data Service, the University of Essex and University College London (UCL) began a five-year multi-disciplinary research programme to develop a portal which can transform research into the UK’s energy challenges. It will give researchers access to household energy data for the first time, supporting government policy with an aim to help develop new products and services for the energy markets.
Telling stories with data
Data can give us insights into society and show us how we live – in broad ‘state of the nation’ terms, or addressing specific communities. Using Census data from 2011, for example, a City University of London research project found that although many affected women live in large cities, no local authority area in England and Wales is likely to be free from female genital mutilation entirely. The findings were used to help local authorities plan services for affected women, such as maternity care, and to make child protection services aware if they had daughters.
Connected conversations
The ‘connected conversations’ topic is about working together across organisations, and in December the UK Data Service and 10 other archives across Europe announced the successful end of a year-long project to create an expert ‘tour guide’ on data management. Created to introduce researchers to the concepts of data management, the guide aims to contribute to professionalism in data management and to increase the value of research data by making the data findable, understandable, sustainably accessible and reusable.
We are data
What are the implications of a culture that makes so much use of our personal data? We’ve been considering the legal and ethical challenges of using smart meter data – especially when those data can be linked to other data, such as the English Housing Survey, for example. Linked datasets can give a fuller, richer picture, but there can be problems with people’s consent to use their data, and security concerns when linking data.
Director of the UK Data Service, Matthew Woollard, “Love Data Week gives us a chance to celebrate some of our achievements in acquiring, curating and providing access to the UK’s largest collection of social, economic and population data; in developing the highest standards of data preservation and sharing; and helping researchers, students and teachers from every sector to understand all our lives.”