Nexer Digital has been appointed to undertake a 6 month digital transformation project for Research Data Scotland.
The £300k project is to simplify and speed up public access to sector data and also to design a new Data Access Service.
The Data Access Service will allow researchers to access and link data about people, places and businesses, to improve the health and social wellbeing in the country.
The Cheshire agency’s role will be to design the platform and ensure that it’s available without “compromising scrutiny or security.”
“Data is often locked away in lots of individual systems, across many different organisations, and isn’t in a format that makes access or integration easy,” explained Hugh Wallace, Chief Information Officer at Research Data Scotland.
“One of the main reasons that RDS exists is to simplify and speed up access to public sector data, and in turn enable this data to be used for research purposes in the public good. Working together we have the chance to design and streamline the system to enhance applications and approvals processes and offer an end-to-end digital journey for the first time.”
Nexer Digital will create advice for researchers and design a guided, accessible application process enabling researchers to access public datasets. It will also test the solution for usability and accessibility.
“Digital transformation should be a considered process and make sure legacy and fragmented systems can be joined in a simple and accessible way, reducing the time it takes to find information, and boosting the number of people that have access to it,” added Shaun Gomm, Commercial Director at Nexer Digital.
