Committed investment and spend for the Integrated Data Programme

FOI reference: FOI-2024-2395

You asked

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information:

• How much investment was committed to the Integrated Data Service (in £)?
• How much out of what was committed to the Integrated Data Service has been spent so far (in £)?
• Please provide a breakdown of the spending: -   How many projects within the Integrated Data Service have been started, and completed? -   Please include a title and summary of each of these projects, and the budget/estimates of their costs, and start date and if relevant completion date -   If it is possible to provide a summary of the outcomes of the projects please also do so 

In the event that you exercise an exemption on any of the above data, please could you supply me with the total figures.

We said

Thank you for your request. 

The Integrated Data Service (IDS) is being delivered by the Integrated Data Programme (IDP), which is a cross-government programme funded by HM Treasury. 

The IDS is built to be future proofed, to better enable the government's data sharing agenda in a more effective and efficient way. The IDP has invested in the development of the IDS, which provides the infrastructure for sharing and linking de-identified data for analytic use. Further details about available data in the IDS can be found on the IDS website.

For the financial years 2020/21 to 2023/24 inclusive, the total budget of the IDP was approximately £185.5 million. During the same period, the total expenditure of the IDP was approximately £169.3 million.  

For the financial year 2024/25, the budget of the IDP is approximately £55 million. 

These figures incorporate the full costs of the IDP and not just those recorded for the ONS directorate segment "Integrated Data Programme and Services". 

The IDP budget has been ring fenced by HM Treasury as part of the UK Statistics Authority's financial settlements, to focus on the development of the IDS. 

This investment has delivered the IDS and other data capabilities, such as the Reference Data Management Framework (RDMF). 

The IDS hosts analytic projects accredited under the Digital Economy Act 2017 and the Statistics and Service Registration Act 2007. 

The organisations leading on these analytic projects are responsible for the project outcomes. 

More information about these analytic projects can be found on the IDS website.

The ONS also conducts analysis in the IDS in support of the ongoing development and improvement of our statistical outputs. More information about this analysis is as follows:

"Project start" refers to the month in which the analysis began in the IDS. 

• Analysis to assess the potential use of linked administrative and survey data in the IDS to analyse child and fuel poverty.
  Project start: December 2024

• Analysis comparing HMRC Pay As You Earn data with Labour Force Survey and Transformed Labour Force Survey data to understand potential sources of bias in labour market statistics. Project start: December 2024 

• Analysis of anonymised and aggregated mobility data from Virgin Media O2 to provide insights into population dynamics, travel patterns, and movement trends.
  Project start: June 2024 

• Research extracting insights from online job adverts using Textkernel data, to provide micro-data for cross-government use.
  Project start: March 2024 

• Test the capability of aggregate mobility data, including mobile phone data, for use by the ONS and across government.
  Project start: November 2023 

• Developing standards and models for describing the interaction of climate and health in global official statistics.
  Project start: November 2023 

• Use of indexed data to estimate causal models relating health treatments to their subsequent impacts on people's ability to work, to explore the health drivers of economic inactivity.
  Project start: September 2023 

• Exploratory project to inform on-boarding processes and undertake basic exploration of energy efficiency data to ascertain potential for future research projects.
  Project start: January 2023 

• Assessment of the feasibility of using Bayesian Demographic Accounting methods to inform a new method for coherent population estimates.
  Project start: May 2022 

• Insight into the energy efficiency of different types of dwellings, designed to complement quarterly statistical releases by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
  Project start: May 2022  

• Exploration of estimates for intermediate consumption and business economic indicators, which could inform policy questions related to business resilience, productivity, supply chains intelligence and work force.
  Project start: May 2022 

• Exploring the use of alternative data sources, including text data from regional and national news articles, to create Levelling Up indicators.
  Project start: May 2022 

We do not hold an estimate of the cost of each analytic project hosted in the IDS.