Apply for an accredited research project

To request access to data in the Secure Research Service (SRS), researchers must submit a research project application for accreditation in PASS (Project Accreditation Service for SRS) This link also includes information about the data available.

On average, it can take around 10 weeks for an application to be approved but this is often quicker if the application provides sufficient detail and application guidance is followed correctly. Depending on several factors, for example, the complexity of the project or the time it takes for data owners to provide their approvals, the process may take longer.

As the Digital Economy Act 2017 is the default legal gateway for providing access to data in the SRS, we will conduct a review of the project application to ensure it complies with the legislation and meets the standard required by the Research Accreditation Panel.

When submitting a research project application in PASS, researchers must adhere to the conditions of project accreditation. We ask researchers to provide information about their research, including project aims, methodology and data requirements to assure the Research Accreditation Panel that the research is legal, ethical and in the public interest.

Project Roles 

As part of your project application, you are required to define your project team. Below are the roles and their responsibilities: 

Project Co-ordinator 

Every project must have a Project co-ordinator as this is the fundamental governance role for all individual projects and its function is to provide assurance that the content and the operation of the project is maintained in line with the agreed boundaries. As Project Co-ordinator you are responsible for: 

•  ensuring that the project team access the SRS in compliance with SRS operating procedures and complete the project within the agreed timescales.

• ensuring that any requests to change project purpose or timescale are approved by the SRS team before you make any amendments to the project.

• ensuring that the SRS Customer Support and your organisation's Assured Organisational Connectivity (AOC) Single Point of Contact (where applicable) are made aware of any changes to your project team (e.g. movers and leavers) before any moves are made.

• ensuring that if you are changing role and are no longer continuing as project lead that you submit a change request on the Project Application Service for the SRS (PASS) or email SRS.Customer.Support@ons.gov.uk to nominate a replacement before leaving.

• ensuring that team members are aware of and comply with the access conditions set for your project (as per the email from SRS Customer Support when your project went live).

• responding to any audit requests for information from SRS Customer Support, Access or Security Compliance and Audit teams.

• ensuring that all project researchers are minimising their use of space in the SRS and optimising code, by following best practice. This includes:

  • ensuring that no datasets are copied into the project folders
  • deleting old/unused working files
  • compressing data that will be used later

Deputy Project Co-ordinator

The Deputy Project Coordinator supports the Project Coordinator, has the same permissions to make changes and provides cover if they are unable to fulfil their role. 

Researcher

Researchers must be accredited before accessing their SRS project, this could be full or provisional dependant on experience or qualifications.

Output Reviewer  

The Output reviewer role enables individuals to view pre-publication outputs that have been cleared from the SRS, but with no access to data within the SRS. This role does not require accreditation, but individuals fulfilling this role must sign an agreement and be added the project application. 

A downloadable version of the application questions is available in the Research Project Application Form although all applications to access data in the Secure Research Service (SRS) must be submitted through PASS.

We advise applicants to use the following guidance to avoid delays during the application review.

1. PASS guidance: each question in the PASS application provides guidance on the information we need to know.
2. Project application example guidance this provides additional information about what is required in your project application.

The SRS permits the application of machine learning techniques and will consider their use on a case-by-case basis.

As with all techniques in the SRS, they are allowed provided they lead to traditional "static" outputs, such as tabulations, graphs, written reports, or code. However, the export of machine learning model files is not permitted under any circumstances at this time.

For existing SRS projects, if you wish to discuss how machine learning might be used, please contact SRS.Project.Feasibility@ons.gov.uk in the first instance to understand whether this is something we can support. These requests will be considered based on user requirements and service capability.

As a researcher in the SRS, you are responsible for ensuring that statistical disclosure control methods have been adopted in such a way that produces safe outputs. Should you have comments or questions, please contact the dedicated SRS Statistical Support Team at Statistical.Support@ons.gov.uk.

All researchers must be accredited before access to data is granted. This can be applied for in PPS (People and Projects Service and in parallel with the project application.

It is essential to check the access permissions and conditions assigned to all requested project datasets when applying for a project. To do this, applicants must refer to the Access and Governance information for each required dataset in our Metadata Catalogue.

Data owners may set special conditions of access to data shared via the SRS. If standard access conditions do not apply, it is likely that we need to contact data owners to review a project application. This can add time to the application review process and should be considered when applying for a project in the Secure Research Service (SRS).

Access to the SRS must be through an approved safe setting. Datasets have different access permissions, and the overall project access level (that is, where a project can be accessed) is dependent on the minimum access stipulation within the selected datasets. This means that not all projects can be accessed from an office or home location, even if an Assured Organisational Connectivity (AOC) agreement is in place, and may require safe room only access if even one dataset only permits this.

Researchers should have an AOC agreement in place if connection to the SRS is required from office or remote (home) locations and all datasets permit this. This can be applied for by emailing srs.connectivity@ons.gov.uk and in parallel with the project application.

For more information about access levels, please visit our webpage on how to access our service and data securely.

We will conduct a review of the project application to ensure it complies with the standard required by the Research Accreditation Panel. Our review consists of several stages and we will send the Project Lead comments and queries until we are satisfied it meets the project accreditation criteria. For the full conditions, please read Part 2, Section C of the Research Code of Practice and Accreditation Criteria.

The different stages of the approval process from submission to accreditation of the project application are as follows.

1. Checks to ensure the application has been completed to a suitable standard.

2. Checks to ensure the research is feasible and meets the required accreditation standards, including an ethics assessment by the Centre for Applied Data Ethics.

3. Approval from the data owners that the project proposes appropriate use of their data; this may involve approval from additional governance boards.

4. Review and accreditation from the UK Statistics Authority on behalf of the Research Accreditation Panel.

5. Review and accreditation from the Research Accreditation Panel or National Statistician’s Data Ethics Committee may be required if the research carries additional risk.

Applicants may receive queries from multiple reviewers of their application at any stage of the project accreditation process.

Once researchers and their research projects are accredited or approved, researchers using the Secure Research Service (SRS) will have their user accounts and project space created. Datasets requested for projects will be mapped to the project space and access to data will be provided.

Researchers may also send approved data to the Statistical Support Team to be added to the project space. This should be included in the External Datasets section of the initial project application. Failure to include this at the earliest stage may result in delays in processing the additional ingest request, as inclusion of additional data must be considered for the whole project.

For more information on the ingest process please read the Requesting Ingests information.

A complete record of accredited researchers and their projects will be published on the UK Statistics Authority website to ensure transparency of access to data for research.

Researchers should ensure that their project areas are subject to regular housekeeping and all files that allow for replication of research (such as code files) are cleared and exported from the environment at the end of the project.

If you have an active project you are no longer working on, please discuss with your project coordinator and request that they contact srs.customer.support@ons.gov.uk with the project number to request to close the project. Please also advise the Customer Support team if your project lead has changed so we have the most recent contact information, should we need to contact you about your project.

We will contact the lead researcher when a research project is approaching its expected completion date. The researcher may have the option to extend the project if more time is required, although this is not guaranteed.

Researchers should indicate enough time to complete their research when applying for a project. This must be within five years for Digital Economy Act accredited projects. We may contact you regarding your completion date if your project is deemed suitable for transition to the Integrated Data Service.

When the research project is complete, we ask researchers to provide us with any final publications associated with the work. In some cases, we may seek to produce a case study where we see examples of innovative methodology, strong public benefit, or outstanding collaboration. For more information, take a look at Research Outcomes.

You can contact the Secure Research Service (SRS) Customer Support team for more information by email srs.customer.support@ons.gov.uk.

If you require initial log on credentials or a password reset, please contact by telephone on +44 1329 447871 between the hours of 9am and 11am and 1pm and 3pm.