Ashley Akbari is Professor of Population Data Science Research at Swansea University, and is a theme lead with ADR Wales and the Head of SAIL User and Data Support Services (UDSS) & Research Innovation at SAIL Databank. Here, Ashley discusses the findings and considerations for future work gathered from a workshop conducted by the SAFER project.
At SAIL, we’re working towards understanding the key challenges and considerations in order to enable federation as part of a secure, trusted and transparent UK data research infrastructure. That means listening, learning, and engaging across the sector and at the recent ADR UK Conference in Cardiff, we had the opportunity to do just that. As part of the SAFER: SAIL Advancing Federated Exploration and Readiness project, we brought together a highly engaged group of stakeholders for a workshop designed to share knowledge, challenge ideas and build a collaborative vision. Here’s what happened, what we learned, and what comes next.
What is SAFER?
SAFER is a UKRI-funded, DARE-UK backed project to explore solutions to TRE variances in legal and governance rules that makes large-scale federated analysis challenging. SAIL Databank will review its policies, consult with stakeholders, and develop governance models to overcome these barriers. SAFER is one of six projects funded in this way by UKRI and DARE UK with the aim of integrating and testing capabilities to enhance key aspects of operations in Trusted Research Environments (TREs). Areas of focus included federated analysis, support for AI training, semi-automated output checking and TRE reference architecture implementations within specific UK TREs and data services.