However, such types of administrative data are not often available for research. Administrative data held about individuals are rarely de-identified or archived, and are not usually made accessible for research outside the organisations that hold the data. regarded as commercially-sensitive in a competitive tendering environment.
When I presented on my research use of romania rcs data administrative data at the European Conference on Domestic Violence in Oslo in September 2019, delegates from other European countries were aware of service monitoring datasets in their contexts, but none had accessed such data for research. They anticipated similar problems to the UK whereby such data would be seen as too commercially sensitive, or that there was no culture or opportunity to archive such data securely. Data may reside in an organisation’s IT system for a few years, but be effectively lost in IT upgrades after the end of the funding programme that originally required the data collection.
Overall, I was left with the conclusion that we need to change how we think about administrative data.