The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a UK government body investing in research and innovation, has announced it will invest £168 million on a public data project aimed at improving lives across the UK.

The investment in Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK) will be spread over five years and focus on a scheme that aims to gain insights on everything from the cost of living to early cancer diagnosis.

UKRI said that the public sector holds vast amounts of data, adding that unlocking it in a responsible way can provide insights and drive policy improvements that make a real difference.

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

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

UKRI added that the funding will also inform 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.

It claims this will 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.

Since launching in 2018, ADR UK says it has contributed to a wide range of projects including helping secure real-terms pay rises for millions of workers across the UK by providing data-led insights used to support the passing of legislation increasing the National Living Wage.

ADR UK has enabled the Ministry of Justice to understand the extent and nature of repeat users of the criminal justice system, which it said is helping to break the cycle of crime and reduce harm to communities, ensuring interventions are better targeted and more effective.

“Data is absolutely vital when making key policy decisions to help transform lives for the better, and the Administrative Data Research UK partnership has shown that in practice, from helping to secure pay rises for millions, smashing the glass ceiling for underrepresented groups and cracking down on crime that blights our streets,” said science and technology secretary Peter Kyle. “By investing £168 million of Government funding to extend this programme, we are backing our world class researchers to build on this work, unlocking more of the data they need to improve lives and deliver the economic growth and opportunity as part of our Plan for Change.”

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