This SA-TIED project has been set-up to support the development of policymaking in the Southern Africa region by working closely with researchers to close knowledge gaps, which are crucial to the achievement of inclusive growth and economic transformation in this area of the world.
Through the SA-TIED programme, researchers have access to the comprehensive anonymised tax data made available by the National Treasury of South Africa, which is supported by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), as well as many other governmental organisations in South Africa and its sub-region.
Key leaders from SA-TIED, and other partners from the Office for National Statistics and the Cathie Marsh Institute (based at the University of Manchester), visited the UK Data Archive in March to meet with key staff from the UK Data Service. During this meeting, they discussed how they could all work together more closely in the future, what could be learnt from the SA-TIED project and how the UK Data Service can support their future aims of scaling up their operations.
The SA-TIED delegates had already met with key contacts in ONS and ADR UK during the week and were particularly interested in finding out about the operation of the UKDS in terms of serving academic research at scale, as well governmental research.
During the visit, key staff from UKDS were able to present operational aspects of its large and efficient service to the South African delegates. This included presentations of the processes, procedures and governance used by UKDS around handling sensitive data and a presentation of automation tools currently in development that can be used to maintain an efficient service at scale – meeting demands of a growing service in the future. The delegates also heard about the comprehensive training that the UKDS provides its researchers and were provided with further resources following the fruitful and collaborative visit.
Camilla Philpot Thomsen, the Associate Director for Data Operations at the UK Data Service, is looking forward to working with SA-TIED in the future: “It was a pleasure to host delegates from Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED) in March. It was particularly valuable to me to hear how the SA-TIED service puts support for policymaking at the forefront of their endeavours, which gave rise to some fruitful discussions around how to build and maintain the most efficient service for the end user. It was a really collaborative day of presentations and discussions and we are excited to continue our association in future.”
The first phase of the SA-TIED programme was implemented from 1 November 2017 to 31 March 2022. It led to major research contributions to the policy environment and made administrative data available to researchers, which provided a valuable resource to policymakers around the world and broader insight into how public policies impact vulnerable populations.
The SA-TIED Phase II runs until 30 June 2025, building on previous success and increasing its relevance to the policymaking environment in South Africa. Phase II will carry forward the key principles that have made SA-TIED a success: collaboration and inclusivity across the entire operation, the centrality of the three programmatic pillars of research, capacity development, and policy-bridging, and commitment to the goal of a world-class research infrastructure around South Africa’s tax-administrative data.
We will update you on what the next chapter will look like with SA-TIED working with the UK Data Service in the future, following this recent meeting.