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Proceedings of seminar:
The UK National Strategy for Data Resources and its Implications for Scotland

Seminar held on 17 May 2007
at the School of Education in Edinburgh University.
Funded by the Robertson Bequest.

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The discussion available through this page arises from a seminar at the School of Education in Edinburgh University on the implications for Scotland of the UK National Strategy for Data Resources. The seminar was held on 17 May 2007, and was funded by the Robertson Bequest.

Note: If you have any problems downloading or viewing the presentations available on this page, please contact Lindsay Paterson by email on lindsay.paterson@ed.ac.uk

The seminar opened with a talk by Peter Elias, the ESRC’s Strategic Advisor for Data Resources. (Further notes on the speakers are below.) The summary of his talk is:

In an increasingly complex, dynamic and diverse society, there is a need to create better data resources to answer some of the more complex research and policy questions that arise. Developments in technology are creating new opportunities to create, record, store, retrieve and link data, resulting in a rapid growth in the volume of data potentially available for research. In the light of such developments, there is a growing recognition of the need for a more strategic and co-ordinated approach to the development and management of data as witnessed by the creation of a National Data Strategy involving collaboration between research councils, government departments, charitable trusts, academics and the Statistics Users Forum.

Download Peter Elias' PowerPoint presentation as a pdf file (1 Mb)

Link to National Data Strategy document cited in presentation (slide 8: www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Images/
National_Data_Strategy_tcm6-18160.pdf)

This was followed by responses from:

The seminar was chaired by Lindsay Paterson, Edinburgh University.

Notes on speakers

Peter Elias is based at the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick. Since October 2004 he has been the ESRC Strategic Advisor for Data Resources and before this was a member of the ESRC Research Resources Board. His research interests range from the evaluation of large-scale government programmes designed to affect labour market behaviour, statistical monitoring of the status of particular groups in the labour market, the study of occupational change and the relationship between further and higher education, vocational training and labour market outcomes. Peter has published his research extensively in a wide variety of journals, book, research reports and papers. He is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

Diana Wilkinson was appointed Chief Researcher at the Scottish Executive in early 2006.  She is Head of Profession for over 80 social researchers working within all the main SE Departments. Her own office provides research support to central Executive functions including Strategy and Communications. Diana has had a long term career in Social Research in the Executive, most recently in the Education Department.  She is currently a member of the Scottish Funding Council’s Strategic Research Development Grant Panel and the Education Sub-Panel for RAE 2008.

Duncan Macniven has been Registrar General for Scotland since 2003, responsible for demographic matters including registration of births, deaths and marriages, population statistics and the census. He is a member of the UK Data Forum. Duncan previously worked for the Forestry Commission and the Scottish Office.

Paul Boyle is Director of the Longitudinal Studies Centre – Scotland and Professor of Human Geography at the University of St Andrews. He was the founding Director of the Social Dimensions of Health Institute and Deputy Director of the Census Interaction Data Service. He is co-editor of the journal Population, Space and Place. Prior to joining the University of St Andrews he worked in the universities of Swansea, Leeds and Canterbury (New Zealand). Paul's research interests include geographical health and demographic issues.

 

Note: If you have any problems downloading or viewing the presentations available on this page, please contact Lindsay Paterson by email on lindsay.paterson@ed.ac.uk

 

(Published Online: 28 June 2007)

 

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