Despite the passage of relevant legislation in 2017, the UK has failed to bring its disparate datasets together to enrich its public evidence base. Instead, data withers in silos across countless government bodies. Witnesses to our inquiry were clear; the problems here are not legislative, and they do not result from challenges around data protection. The issue is much simpler; departments and public bodies choose not to share data because they do not share an incentive to do so. And no centr...

Despite the passage of relevant legislation in 2017, the UK has failed to bring its disparate datasets together to enrich its public evidence base. Instead, data withers in silos across countless government bodies. Witnesses to our inquiry were clear; the problems here are not legislative, and they do not result from challenges around data protection. The issue is much simpler; departments and public bodies choose not to share data because they do not share an incentive to do so. And no central, coordinating leader has yet made a sufficiently strong case for the benefits of sharing data for statistics and research across government. Type: conclusion | Number: 4 | Paragraph: 44 | Response status: under_consideration Government response: 26. Both the ONS and the Authority welcome the Committee’s recognition of the opportunities offered by administrative data sources. We also recognise the need to improve the culture of data-sharing across government if we are to maximise those opportun