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Data infrastructure gets 4.3 million GBP boost

Article dated: 6 July 2012

Recognising both the need and opportunity for greater exploitation of its data resources, the ESRC has joined forces with the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to fund two major e-infrastructure projects at the University of Essex and University of Manchester.

The first grant of £2.42 million is to construct, equip and implement a national secure data centre as part of the ESRC's infrastructure at the University of Essex. The facility will provide enlarged access capability for the Secure Data Service; a sustainable disaster recovery facility for ESRC data service infrastructures; and the computational capacity to provide significant possibilities for the use of administrative data within a secure setting. The facility is now partially operational with plans for a full service launch in September 2012.

From the same BIS funding source, ESDS has received £1.88 million to re-license a large range of datasets administered through the University of Manchester, including the portfolios from the International Monetary Fund, the International Energy Agency and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It has also been possible to negotiate an additional wide range of new international data resources, including access to the IMF eLibrary Text Collections of books and periodicals, making at least 10,000 documents and around 825,000 pages of historical material available.

Both grants extend work already underway, signalling the vital importance of the ESRC's investments in data and services for the benefit of academic, government and commercial research now and in the future.