Administrative Data Research UK, a public sector data outfit that leverages data to garner insights into public policy, has gained £168 million funding from UKRI.

UKRI’s reinvestment in ADR UK will continue its work linking UK-wide data with research projects.

The public sector holds vast amounts of data and unlocking it in a responsible way can provide insights and drive policy improvements that make a real difference to our lives and livelihoods.

ADR UK does this by facilitating secure access for accredited researchers to that data, unlocking evidence that may otherwise remain hidden.

In the next investment phase, ADR UK will be supporting a range of research programmes, including projects to improve cancer detection using health and administrative data through the Cancer Data Driven Detection programme in partnership with Cancer Research UK and others.

The funding will also support policies to help drive economic growth and improve living standards by enabling ADR UK to further expand the linked economic datasets available to researchers and policymakers.

These will aim to support critical research to better understand the drivers of UK productivity by linking employment, business, benefits, and income data, giving policymakers a more complete picture of how the UK economy works.

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“Our £168m investment in ADR UK is a sign of UKRI’s commitment to harnessing data to drive economic growth, better public services, and outstanding research,” said Stian Westlake, executive chair of the Economic and Social Research Council which hosts ADR UK.

“Linking government social, economic and health data in a secure manner that preserves citizens’ privacy is a powerful driver of better research and better public policy, and a vital resource for the scientists and researchers in the UK and beyond.”