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<p>The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.</p><p>
</p><p>A response to the Noble Lord’s Question of 5th February is attached.</p><p>
</p><p>The Lord Clement-Jones CBE</p><p>House of Lords London</p><p>SW1A 0AA</p><p>13
February 2024</p><p> </p><p>Dear Lord Clement-Jones,</p><p> </p><p>As National Statistician
and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary
Question asking (1) what was the cost of running the Office for National Statistics
(ONS) Integrated Data Service in 2023; (2) how many projects were active in the Integrated
Data Service in 2023; and (3, 4) what are the equivalent figures for the ONS Secure
Research Service for the same period <strong>(HL2184)</strong>.</p><p> </p><ol><li><p>The
approximate costs of running the nascent Integrated Data Service in 2023 were £4,200,000,
including infrastructure costs that permit future scaling of the service.</p></li></ol><p>
</p><ol start="2"><li><p>There were 20 active projects within the Integrated Data
Service in 2023.</p></li></ol><p> </p><ol start="3"><li><p>The cost of running the
ONS Secure Research Service in 2023 were £7,000,000.</p></li></ol><p> </p><ol start="4"><li><p>The
Secure Research Service had a total of 842 projects during 2023. On average, there
were around 600 live projects at any one time during 2023.</p></li></ol><p> </p><p>Equivalent
operating costs and projects numbers should be interpreted with caution. The Integrated
Data Service (IDS) is in development and currently operates within a BETA maturity
phase. In September 2023 IDS received Digital Economy Act (2017) accreditation for
data provision, making IDS the first cloud-native trusted research environment to
be accredited for data provision under the legislation and opening the opportunity
to scale.</p><p> </p><p>The IDS is built to be future proofed, to better enable the
Government’s data sharing agenda in a more effective and efficient way. The IDS will
grow at pace over the remainder of the programme with a pipeline of additional and
transformational capability, data, projects and users which exceed the capabilities
of the Secure Research Service (SRS). Improved data integration and cross-sector collaboration
enabled through cloud technologies will drive significant uptake.</p><p> </p><p>The
SRS is a long-standing and mature Trusted Research Environment which has operated
in its current form since 2017, having previously operated as the Virtual Microdata
Laboratory (VML) from 2004. The SRS grew rapidly upon achieving DEA accreditation
in 2019, which enabled greater expansion of its data catalogue and user base. An improved
trajectory is anticipated for the IDS with many SRS’s data sets, as well as projects
(where applicable) migrating to the IDS as part of a transition that is underway.</p><p>
</p><p>Yours sincerely.</p><p>Professor Sir Ian Diamond</p><p> </p>
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