This includes the Statistics and Registration Service Act, the Digital Economy Act, the Census Act, the General Data Protection Regulation, the Data Protection Act 2018 and any other relevant legislation. Data management Use transparent and legally compliant data practicesĭata practices should be transparent and comply with all relevant laws, policies, regulations, and standards of good practice regarding the acquisition, storing, processing, sharing, and disposal of all data. Quality assurance should take place across the entire data lifecycle and should be proportionate to the importance of the data. Achieving high data quality helps to ensure effective decisions can be made using the data. Actively manage, review and improve data qualityĭata quality is defined as whether datasets are fit for their intended purpose. Metadata is information about the characteristics of data and what happens to it from when it is collected or acquired, across its whole lifecycle through to archiving. All data must have metadataĪll datasets, whether collected via survey, acquired from an external supplier, or derived from processing, should be accompanied by metadata. It should then be disposed of or archived appropriately.
Audit all subsequent data changesĭata should be backed up appropriately and retained only where necessary and for the minimum period required in line with policies, guidance, and any agreements in place with data suppliers or providers. Keep a copy of data in its 'as received' state and keep an audit trail of all subsequent changes, managed with clear version control practices so that it can always be rolled back to 'as-received' state, or to be accessed at the lowest level of granularity (dependent on access permissions). Keep an original copy of data as they are received.
Follow a controlled and consistent data ingest processĭata can arrive via any of the agreed approved corporate routes and follow clear and consistent ingest processes for loading into an approved data storage solution data will be managed in accordance with agreed and authorised process. Always research ethically and learn about the needs of all kinds of users as this will help you to develop inclusively. The users' needs must inform the design at every stage to ensure you build the right thing and collect data that are fit for purpose. When designing and developing a data collection service, product or tool always start by learning about the respondent needs of the users (i.e., the people) who will be providing the data. Assets Follow best practice for data collection