The UK Data Service’s Data Access Policy locates its approach to open data in a venerable and long-established continuum of protecting the most sensitive social science data for research and supporting data owners to make their data available as widely as possible in ways which assure the highest standards of access management. Lucy Bell and Louise Corti of the UK Data Service give an update on the latest developments with open data at the Service. So much of our exciting data are now open, with more to follow.
A range of open social science data is available from the UK rcs data malaysia Data Service – and the number of open data collections we hold is growing. As of today, we have 57 open collections, including international data, Government and large-scale survey series, large-scale qualitative collections and Census data. You can find all our open data via a quick browse of Discover.
What defines open data?
The Open Knowledge Foundation’s Open Government Data Working Group definition of open data sets out ten principles, covering access, redistribution, reuse, technological restrictions, attribution, integrity, discrimination and licensing. These can be problematic for social science data, most of which are classed as ‘personal’ – they almost always refer to real people. Issues of consent and anonymisation play a part at every stage of the data journey, considering the rights of the data subjects very carefully. Rather than prevent any access to these types of data, it may be better to see access as a continuum, along which data collections may be moved to make them more open.