Hello, good morning everyone and thank you for making time to attend today's webinar about finding and accessing data via the UK Data Service. My name is Paru Sia and today I'm going to be presenting together with my colleague Ira Kles. Good morning from me as well. Thank you very much for joining. We hope you enjoy and that we will help you learn things and help you how to access data. Thank you. Okay, so before we begin we would also like to thank Emma Green for facilitating today's webinar. Today's webinar we are going to be covering is going to be in three sections. The first section will cover who we are and what we do as UK Data Service, our data sources and who can access the data in our catalog and the different ways we categorize the data we hold in the archive. This section will also include guidance on how to search and find data and also have a mini activity for practice and feedback. In the second section we will focus on how to access the data we hold in the archive. We will initially look at the data access policy which are the access conditions and the restrictions and then the registration process. My colleague Ira Kles will help you get a clear understanding of the different data access levels and how to access such data. Throughout the section we'll also be looking at the different tools which can help you find, explore and analyze data. At the end of the presentation we'll allow some time for questions so please insert any questions you have in the Zoom Q&E and we'll be answering along as well and we'll also make time to answer the rest of the questions at the end of the webinar. So let's get right into the business of today. Let's take a look at what the UK Data Service is. The UK Data Service holds the UK's largest collection of research data. It is home to the UK's only nationally funded research infrastructure for creating and providing access to social science data and has been influential across the world since it was first established in its original form at the University of Essex in 1967. The UK Data Service is funded by UK Research and Innovation as a UKRI through the Economic and Social Research Council which is ESRC. To meet the data needs of researchers, students and teachers from all sectors including academia, central and local government, charities and foundations, independent research centres, think tanks, business consultants and the commercial sector. Our collection includes major UK government sponsored surveys, cross-national surveys, longitudinal studies, UK sensors data, international aggregates, business data and qualitative data. We provide more than just data. We provide guidance, resources and trainings like this workshop we have to make the most of our data and help researchers develop their skills in data use. Here in the UK Data Archive which is the lead organisation, we work with colleagues across the UK to deliver the UK Data Service. We collaborate with research data aspects at JSC which is the Joint Information Systems Committee, Katimash Institutes for Social Research at the University of Manchester, the University of Edinburgh and University College London. If you are interested to know more about what we do, the benefit of secondary analysis and an in-depth presentation on different types of data we hold, we will recommend that you view the recording of our last webinar which is an introduction to the UK Data Service which took place last week, the 5th of March and this can be found on the UK Data Service YouTube channel as well. A copy of the presentation slides can also be downloaded from the training and events page on our website. So the sources of data we hold comes from a wide range of places and we are allowed to disseminate them under the license from the original data depositor. While we are not involved in the collection process for the data we hold, the data are deposited with us. We do take part in preserving, creating and presenting the data in our catalogue with clear details and documentation making them available to researchers. Some of the most prominent sources for the data we hold are the National Statistical Authorities which includes Office for National Statistics, ONS, National Records of Social Arms Scotland and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. We also have data from the UK Government departments which include the Home Office, Department for Environment through the Rural Affairs which is DEFRA, the Department for Business, Innovations and Skills and Department for Works and Pensions. We also have data from the Intergovernmental Organisations which include the IMF, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Bank. We also have data from research institutes which include the National Center for Social Research and the Institute for Social and Economic Research, ISA and the Center for Longitude and Study, CLS. Finally, and through our catalogue, you can also find data that have been deposited by individual researchers and academics. Researchers that are funded by ESRC also deposits their data with us through ReShare which is the UK Data Services online repository where researchers can archive, publish and share data. So who is the data for? So the data we hold is suitable for researchers, students and teachers from any discipline, organisation or country who have registered on accounts with us. Some data sets however have restrictions on access due to the data redistribution, licence agreements we have with the data providers but there is opportunity for everyone to access our data catalogue. Although most of our users are academic users, contrary to popular beliefs everyone and I mean everyone can access, register and access data we hold. Users from other sectors such as the local and national government departments, charities, think tanks as well as commercial users are welcome to register with us. So commercial users may face further restrictions as to what they can assess and they may incur some fees depending on what they intend to use the data for. So if they want to use it for commercial purposes they may have to pay some small amount of fee. Users who are not affiliated with any institution are also welcome to access the data to pursue their independent research. We currently have over 48,000 registered users of the service from 148 different countries. The UK data service currently holds more than 9,000 data sets of a number of categories and types and new data sets are added all the time. A good example of that data is related to COVID-19 which has become very popular within the UK data service in the past few years. The data we offer can be categorised in different ways and our website has been designed to enable you to access the data you require in the most straightforward way. One of the main ways we categorise our data is by their type. So we have UK surveys, cross-national surveys from the regional data and studies among others. Another way we categorise our data is by purpose. So we have data for research purposes and for teaching purposes. So we also have created specific data sets that can be used for teaching in a classroom setting. So our lecturers and teachers are welcome to use our data. We also categorise data by theme and some of these themes include but they are not limited to ageing, crime, economics, COVID-19 and many others. Furthermore, we also categorise data by their geography or by their access levels. Each data set held in the UK data service collection has an access level designated by the data provider depending on the detail, confidentiality and sensitivity of the data. In the second part of this webinar, we will look further into the access levels for the data we hold. When searching for the right data to use in your research, it's important to think about the data in all these different ways. Thinking about who, what, where and when you want to investigate can be beneficial and would help you in your search for data. So what types of data are available to download through the UK data service? So we hold different types of data and these include the survey micro data, international micro data, sensors data and qualitative mix metals data. Let's take a closer look at each of them. One, the survey micro data. These constitutes major UK surveys and live surveys which can be used to produce national estimates and to inform policy making. By the UK data service, you can also access collections of cross-national survey data as well as longitudinal data and studies. We also have the international micro data which contains socioeconomic time series data aggregated to a country or regional level. Many of the data banks are the current releases of the major statistical publications produced by intergovernmental organizations such as the World Bank, the IMF and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. We also have sensors data and these data include statistics from the UK sensors which help paint a picture of the nation and how we live. They provide a detailed snapshot of the population and its characteristics and under PIN-funded allocation to provide public services. The UK data service holds and enables access to aggregate boundary flow and micro data from the last sensors from 1961 through to the latest 2021. Also through integrated sensors micro data, we provide access to sensors data from 1851 to 1911. We also have the qualitative data and mix metals data. So qualitative data is the non-numeric information and mix metals approach combined both quantitative and qualitative data. Now let's take a look at an example of a quantitative data. On this slide, we have an example of the quantitative data and this is a screenshot from the public attitudes to animal research survey from 2016. You can find this data set using our data catalog search tool which you'll talk about in the next slide. This data set is available under an open data license due to its low disclosure risk. You can also see the banded ages and we can also see that the government office regions are the lowest geographic units in this case. This is part of the reason why this data set isn't considered high risk and is more widely available since the way it is structured minimizes the risk that participants may be identified by their responses. Let's take a look at a qualitative data example. What you see on this slide is a screenshot of a transcript of an interview with Frank Wooley from the data set Family Life and Work Experience before 1918. This data cycle ran from 1872-1973 and is also known as the Edwardians. This data set is also considered open access and you can find it through QualiBank which is a very useful online tool we'll be looking at shortly. So just a quick reminder that if you would like to know more about the different data types we hold, I recommend that you look back at the recording of our introduction to the UK data service webinar which can be found on our YouTube channel. So we're now going to guide you through the different ways in which you can browse, search and find data via the UK data service. So the first way of searching and finding data is by using our catalog search tool. So the catalog search box can be found by visiting our website homepage at www.ukdataservice.ac.uk. So on the home page on the home page you can navigate to find data. You will immediately see the catalog search box so when you scroll down you see the search data catalog. Use this search box to look for studies or series on a particular subject or the study number or the name of the principal investigator if you know it. Once you click on search button a list of related results will appear on the data catalog. So you can select to view your results in studies or in series. You can also use various filters on the left side of the data catalog pages in order to narrow down your search. So the available filters include the date form and then the date tool. You can also search using the topic areas. Please note that this filter only contains a limited set of high-level topics. You can also search here using you can also filter by the data type which are the longitudinal studies, UK data, UK survey data, business micro data and sensors data. And you can also use the access filter to filter by the different access levels we have which my colleague will talk about in the next section. You can also refine your search by country. So you can search for different countries if you're looking for specific data relating to a specific country. Finally you can also reset your search to start all over again. Another way of finding data via the UK data services by visiting our browse data page. So this option is very useful if you have a particular research topic that you're interested in or you know the specific type of data you're looking for. So the browse data page can be accessed when you go to our home page which is the ukdataservice.ac.uk. When you click on find data you can scroll down and then you come to browse and access data as pointed here. As you can see once you visit this page you'll be able to browse data sets based on major categories which we've discussed early on in this webinar. Here you can browse data by theme. You can browse data by the data type. Another option we have on this page is also to browse by general. So the search terms here you can also browse for data through the following four different ways through the search term which is another option that will direct you to another direct link to the assets which I'll talk about shortly. You can also click on geography and clicking on this will help you find specific geographic data such as administrative, electoral or boundary data. You can also use our online analysis too which will help you explore the data held in our collection and you can also use the open data which is data that my colleague will talk about the access level for this particular data. Okay so now let's go to let's let's do an example. So as an example we cannot have a feather look on browsing data by theme. The theme section will be particularly helpful if you know the topic you want to research but I'm not sure where to start with finding useful data sets. So this slide shows some of the popular themes that we have which are by aging COVID-19 crime among others. Selecting any of the above themes will present as the individual theme page. So in this case we are using the COVID-19 as an example. So the individual theme page is not only this key data set on our selected topic but they also allow users to view all the data related to this topic within the data catalog by clicking the view all data button. In this example, in this example the yellow arrow points are the view all data button for the COVID-19 data theme. You can also navigate and select the view button next to the key data sets of your selected theme which will take you to the individual study page. So if you click on view it will take you to the individual study page. In our example you can see that if you click the view button for the first key data set listed in this section which is the business insights and condition survey this will take you directly to its catalog page there you can find the full details for this specific data set. All this all it's relevant documentation such as data dictionary, variable list and user guides and a lot of feather resources will be available there. In the second part of this webinar we'll provide you with further information on what can be found in a study specific catalog page. So another way to browse search and find data via the UK data service is by using the humanities and social science electronic thresholds to which is the asset. Your search query is treated both as a free text search it will match occurrences of that search string in a meta data field in a catalog record and as a keyword search which will match keywords found in the corresponding keyword meta data field in the catalog records. Keywords are subject tags drawn from the UK data archives asset which have been used to index each study at concept of variable level and which represents the concepts covered by that data. So keyword matches are shown in search results prefixed by keyword. If you know the name of the keyword you are looking for you can type it into this search box directly by typing keyword followed by the keyword in question in capital electors for example keyword poverty as you can see or the suggested options on the slide. Another interesting option here is that you can perform a search the other way around. As we already mentioned UK um as we already mentioned studies in the UK data service collection are all assigned keywords which are aligned with the asset. You can directly assess this working tool by selecting the help button along the top along the top toolbar on our website and then scrolling down to the section searching for data. When you get to the searching for data you when you click on that it will open this page where you can you can select using asset to search for tools for data. So asset has over 4600 times and more than 3500 alternative times and it is a great tool that can help you find those appropriate times to search for in the data catalog. You can browse a full asset from A to Z or click the hierarchy tab to explore by subject. In our example we have selected we have selected a term poverty and as you can see on your screen the two presented us with the broader concept social disadvantage as well as narrower and feather related terms that could potentially be worth exploring. Finally these two allow us to perform a direct search for our selected keyword in the UK data service catalog. Before we return to Mentimeter and to an activity we have prepared for you so that you can practice finding data I would also like to present to you a set of useful tools which are designed to support your search and explore the data held in our catalog. A very useful tool to explore survey data is the variable and question bank which allows you to find and retrieve information about variables and questions from a range of survey data sets held by the UK data service. You can use this tool to identify which survey data sets contain questions or variables of interest to you. You can directly access the variable and question bank the same way you use to access the asset too. So you go to our website and then you scroll down to search in for data and then you take on variable and question bank. A key benefit of the variable and question bank is that users can find consistency across data sets for example where harmonized or common variables have been used over time across different economic and social surveys. Each variable record provides a link to more information about the 10. The UK data service variable and question bank contains over 450,000 variables with over 250,000 containing question, test or responses. So you can enter your search terms in the search box click go. You can also combine set terms with the filters which are present on the left hand side. So you can filter it out by series the survey country data among others. In this example we have searched for our highest educational qualification in these two which as we can see return thousands of results. From the results and in order to view a single variable record on one page we can click on the variable name which is marked in red in the results page. To compare variables we can choose add to my variables next to the results we are interested in. And then we can select the my variable basket at the top right of the page. Variables can be compared side by side as shown on our example. So we can compare one variable with the other. A key limitation of this tool is that not all studies in our catalog have had the variables added to the stage. However, you can check whether the survey you are interested in is covered by using the survey filter. So looking at the next tool is the quality bank. As per its name this tool is the UK data services search and browse interface for qualitative data objects allowing you to search the contents of text files such as interviews, essays, open-ended questions and reports. Similar to the previous tools you have already covered you can directly assess quality bank by selecting the help button along the top two bar on our website scrolling down to the section searching for data and then searching quality bank. In our example we have search for poverty and we can see that our search returns results where poverty was mentioned as part of the interview transcripts, interview summaries, reports, essays as well as a web resource. Each result provides a direct link to the catalog page of the qualitative data set that this information relates to. The purple arrow on the slide is pointing on this link too. Like with other results or other search functions in our website, quality bank results can also be filtered further in order to know our search. Some of the available options are the resource type as we can see on our screen, dates and collection title. Excellent. So what we will cover on the next part is we have seen some information on how to find the data. Now we will move on the information on how to access the data. We will go through the three tier access policy and we will see examples on open data safeguard the data and controlled data. Each data set we hold in the UK data service collection has a designated access level and users are required to agree to the terms and conditions which relate to how a specific data set can be used. Different access levels may be assigned to different data sets because of the sensitivity of the data or to ensure the anonymity and integrity of the data. In the UK data service we provide access to data via the three tier access policy. This is open data, safeguarded data and control data often referred to as secure data. It's important to note that the UK data service provides the different levels of access as agreed with the data owners. We do not own any of the data we provide. The data are deposited through us and we are allowed to disseminate them for secondary research. A very important question to respond to is how to identify the access level. Let's say we have found the data sets and we are looking now to find what is the access level that my data set is assigned. On my screen here we can see an example. We have one of our most popular data sets, the understanding society. This is the main data set with study number 6614 and how to identify the access level. Every data set has its own catalogue page. This is the catalogue page for this specific data set. Under the details tab we see the study number. Further more down I haven't included it on the screenshot. We can see summary, we can see some important information and the access level is here. These data are safeguarded so we know in which access level we belong. Of course clicking on the access data button we will be able to see the specific access conditions. So here we notify everyone that this data collection is available to UK data service registered users subject to the end user license agreement and commercial use of the data requires approval from the data owner and we will inform you on that. We will see exactly how we can access it. On our next screen here we can see a table. On the left hand side we can see the access level so as we say we have open data, safeguarded data and controlled data. We will go through each one of those. What I would like to note here is that for example on each access level so we can have safeguarded data with different access conditions. Some safeguards are lighter than the others with the most with the highest safeguard in the safeguarded section being the special license I will guide you through each one of those. So three access levels but in each access level especially under the safeguarded data we can have different access conditions. Let's start with the first access level the open data.  As we progress more and more of our data collections are available using open data licenses and we work closely with the data owners to identify and remove any unnecessary barriers to access. Many of the UK census data we hold are available via this way as open data. Data licensed for use with an open license are data which are not personal and have relatively few restrictions to use. By preference the open government license is used where data collections are crown copyright and the creative commons attribution license where the data collections are copyright others. It's important to note that to access open data no registration or authentication is required the data can be automatically downloaded or viewed in our online tools. Let's see some examples. As the first example we have a very another popular set of data 2021 census aggregated data. So as you see on my screen we can see here that immediately of course on the details tab it says this data set is open and we have selected the access data and we see that data may be accessed directly via this is a tool we use for aggregate data and these data are freely available to all and license under the terms of an open government license. You see I'm not logged in so clicking directly the statistics UK DS tool we will move to the tool page here. So this is a tool where you can access a fine statistics about the UK population from aggregate data on the censuses. Another option here we have for example another data set which is open access data set the Oxford Internet Survey 2013 and we see again we are speaking about open data the data collection is to be made available to any user without the requirement of registration and of course here it doesn't send us to an online tool it gives us the file format that this data is available and of course we can select the download button and the download will begin for us. So we have covered so far the open data which doesn't need any registration or authentication in order to be accessed. Turning next safeguarded data this is our largest we can say category of data. Thousands more data sets under the access level safeguarded data can be downloaded order and analyzed online as well some of them by registering and accepted our end user license agreement. Some safeguarded data sets as we have said may have additional conditions and additional steps that we might need to do. It's important to note that the safeguarded is the currently the office for national statistics preferred term for the data we provide under our end user license agreement. Data licensed for use in the safeguarded category are not personal data but the data owners consider there to be a risk of the higher risk of disclosure resulting from linkage to other data such as a private databases. As we can see on the table the main condition for accessing any different types who have safeguarded data and different access conditions but who can access so the main condition to access any data under this category is to first be registered. Most of the safeguarded data sets are available under the end user license as soon as you are a registered user. Some you need to be registered and accept that be registered and do an application but the common is that you need to register and accept the end user license agreement. So since we say that we need to do that let's see how actually to register. Two different ways to register so if you are a UK academic user your organization will have automatically be on the list of accepted organizations and by searching the name of your organization you will be able to find your university and login with the credentials that have been already issued to you by your university. So as an example we have let's say suppose we have a University of Manchester a user so you don't you just select login on the top right we do not have a register button everything is done using the login button so we go login university I say I'm in a University of Manchester so technically you search if your organization is included on the list if it is you will click continue it will send you to your organizational confirmation for your identity you will use the credentials you have already been issued by your university once you do that the system will direct you back to our website to complete the registration form because this is the first time you are accessing our services at the end of the registration form you will confirm your details you will be able to see the end user license agreement to read it and then to click register this is when your registration is ready it's part of the registration to accept the end user license agreement what about not UK academic users that cannot use credentials they have from their organization so you will if your organization is not included and this will not be included if it's not a UK college or university in most of the times all you need to do in order to register is to tick the box my organization is not listed and then you need to request a username so we will provide you the UK data archive will provide you with credentials in order to be able to use the website let's have a quick look on how this will work you need to reconfirm that my organization is not listed I actually need to request a UK data service username you type your email address here we need your institutional email address so let's say you are in a university in Italy or in Spain anywhere in the world your institutional your organizational email address unless you do research for personal purposes for genealogical purposes in that case you can use a gmail hotmail and email you will select to receive a code you will receive a code on your email you will submit this and you will fill the application to request a username we will screen the application we will contact you through our credentials email address and you will have a link in order to actually complete your registration when you click your link you see because the username and password are coming from us you will see this page the UK data archive identity provider you will insert the username we provided with you uh you're the password you created and then you will be uh completing the step we saw earlier the registration form where you at the end you will be able to accept the end user license agreement on our shell pages of course we have specific guidance on both and or registration process and of course do let us know if you have any questions on that so assuming I didn't mention I'm really sorry that the for people who are not in a UK college or university and we have provided the credentials next time you want to log in you can either select that my organization is UK data archive that can be sometimes confusing the easiest way is to say that if you can find your organization uh sign in here and you will click that and you will be sent to this page so every time you just need to do that step to use the username and password we provided to you excellent so uh we have seen so far safeguarded data and we have seen that to access any type of safeguarded data we need to be a registered user so we have seen how to register and accept the end user license agreement which applies to all safeguarded data assets let's now see its category some examples let's start with the end user license so once you are logged into your account so here you see I am a registered user now I have logged in and I want to access this example data set which on the details I have seen that it is a safeguarded data set and on the access conditions I see that is available to register users I am and I have already accepted the end user license agreement so all I need to do is to click add to my account here I need to assign the data set into a project so this is part of the safeguards because you need to inform the service and this information may be passed to the data owners of why I want to use the data set so I'm using it for this purpose so we need to create a project to assign it into let's see as well how we can create a new project of course if you already have a project you can select add to existing project we select create a new project when creating a new project we need to enter the title of our project the abstract using as much detail as possible to describe the intended use of the data we have three different ways to classify the way you use the data non-commercial projects are for research projects and students dissertation PhDs commercial projects are the projects where the main purpose is to generate income and there is no public good and of course we have teaching projects for use within a classroom setting we enter the information now for the purpose of the video of this webinar we are creating a non-commercial project we have created our project so I have named it example project title and I assigned the data set into my project so as we expected the status of the data set is green and active that means that I have met all the conditions it was only one to be a registered user who has accepted the agreement what I can do to download all I need to select actions and we will see the formats the majority of the data sets in our collection are available in the three standard formats data SPSS and tab delimited you select which ones you want download selected and your download will begin some important information before we process we proceed to the next type of safeguarded data we might come across is that if you see that the data set you have found usually it will have a six digit number instead of four and it will be starting with 85 this is why on this slide I have 85 plus four this will show you that it's deposited so we have the main the curated let's say repository in the UK data service where you will find the national the big service the national service and data sets from the research institutions and also as Paruja said on the first part we have the reshare repository which is a repository where it was initially created for ESRC grand holders to be able to submit their data and share their data of course now anybody can share data through that data sets in the reshare repository it's the online self deposit let's say repository of course the UK data service checks the deposits that are made through and are in touch with the depositor and the depositor decides if the data will be open or safeguarded so in such a case you will see that the process is slightly different the system will guide you to download from the reshare repository clicking it you will go to the reshare repository you will log in with your credentials depending on the way you log in and you will be guided so it's it will be either open or safeguarded some of them might need to send an email for example to the depositor to the depositor to the person who deposited the data to explain ethics depends but a safeguarded you will have to be logged in open you will be able to download it immediately that was one case that we wanted to make sure it's to guide you via because it's slightly different now back to where we are we have seen how to download safeguarded data who were only needed registration now let's see the next case we might encounter safeguarded data that I need to be registered but I also need to accept some special conditions let's see an example on that an example data set the british social attitude survey 2021 we see of course safeguarded data set and we see on the access conditions the usual one I need to be registered and different information commercial use of the data requires approval from the data owner and an additional condition everybody needs to acknowledge to read the knowledge that they understand this paragraph that commercial organizations must notify the national setter for social research etc so you see I'm not logged in yet so I'm not I haven't logged in in my account so I'm not a registered user as the system at the moment can recognize but this is great doubt to add it in my account but I have a button here to access online through another tool we have the next star tool so somebody will say how can I access it because I need to be a registered user if I just click select access online we will see some information so we will be able just to see documentation to read about the variables to read variable information and some guidance but we will not be able to actually see any data via the same tool if we are logged in we will be able also to do some analysis we can create some tables and complete some analysis so that's another way instead of downloading the data and using a program to see if the data set can be useful for your research needs but on here I will log in and I will add the data set in my account in a non-commercial project so this note here will not apply to me I will be registered user and I will add the data set in a non-commercial project so I will just need to acknowledge the additional condition this is my non-commercial project I have added it and you see now it's not green it has a yellow request access so why it has the yellow request access because I'm missing a step I need to agree that I understood the additional condition of use all I need to do is to complete actions this is the workflow that will open I have done I have accepted the end-user license through my registration and I need to tick if I am happy of course that I have read and accept the above statement once I do it my data set is active actions download and similarly I can download it with this we covered this case so let's move on to another case safeguard the data set that needs the permission from the depositor before I can be given access what we will do in that case we will use the same data set we just saw but instead of adding it in a non-commercial project I will add it in a commercial project which means that I need approval from the data owner for this case so if I create a commercial project that I assign the data set to my commercial project my workflow will look like this so you see this is different I have a registered user I have accepted the end-user license I can accept I can tick the box for the additional condition of use but I have further steps because my project is a commercial project and this is the only time at our service that a payment is required but it's the least the commercial projects are the least popular let's say we have not have a lot of commercial projects payment required yes and we will need we will create for you a commercial license and you need to make an application for the depositor clicking the form and this is just a screenshot of the how the application looks like so the applicant needs to submit to us this application to explain that this is my project this is the people who I want to have access to the data that's the data why I'm requiring the data the justification and of course the proposal is the most important we need to explain to the data owner that individual x wants to use this data set for this region to create this type of output for commercial purposes the data owner will review the application and we will be completing alongside user once we have the positive approval we will make this tick here and you work you have to accept the additional conditions and we work together on the next steps once all steps are green you will have the permission of course we will be in contact with you to inform you and you will be able to download it only of course for the purposes you have explained that you will use it for a depositor permission can be of course asked in non-commercial so we have the commercial way but we can it can be asked for other reasons so here we have an example the health survey for england 2018 safeguarding data set the data set is available to register users okay and we have some limitations so it says access is limited to applicant based in those specific countries access is limited to applicants based in higher education institution central and local government and hs so it gives us some limitations and with a note that any access request from users not in the above categories will be subject to approval by the depositor so that means that if i am a user in my account or if my account or my settings i'm a user outside of these countries when i have the data set into my non-commercial project it's of course clear that this data set cannot be used for commercial reasons because it has to not for profit education and research purpose only if i if i add it in my non-commercial project and the system identifies that i am in a country outside of the permitted countries or i am let's say a commercial user but i'm doing a non-commercial project which has been assigned to me by the government department the system will identify that and it will ask me to do the same steps we saw earlier the application to ask permission from the depositor i will not be able to download the data immediately again same steps once all approvals are in place we will be able to release the data to you with this i believe we have covered the depositor permission case and let's see a more not wide but a special case let's say safeguarded data sets which are subject to special license if the safeguarded data set you would like to access is a special license data set so you see it's safeguarded but it's special license this will be written on its title clearly so the special license data are anonymized are still anonymized data but they contain more detailed information than their less restrictive counterparts for example some special license data sets contain lower level geographies so remember at the beginning of our session together on the second half of it we saw the 6614 which was the main version of the understanding society now we see we have the same but we have as well a special license access so this one includes some further details it goes deeper on the month a participant was born or it can go deeper in where they live it can give us lower super output areas so it's the same but it includes some further more restricted information for that i will show you on the next slide it's very important to read the documentation and the details to make sure that it is exactly what you need so we have the special license data set and we want to access it let's say we are sure that this is what we need we have identified that this is what we need the data collection is available to end user license perfect i'm a registered user of course important to know that commercial use is not permitted for special license data and no teaching for special license data it's this data have higher risk and they're still anonymized but there is higher risk which can arrive from linking the data set with other databases so the restrictions the safeguards are a bit higher on those and we see that any use of course non-commercial use will need to be approved by the data owner through a special license application again i will log in i will add it to my non-commercial of course project and this will be my workflow where i am the registered user and i need to now complete this step which is to do the special license application i click the bundle i will show you and once all is completed i send it to the email i see on my workflow this is how the bundle looks like so the project lead needs to complete the special license project application with information about the project why the data is needed for the data owner to understand that indeed this person needs the data for every additional member so for every member who will need to access the data we require an additional researcher form and the project lead and every member will need separately each person to complete the special license user agreement the project lead collects all the documents from the members and getting in touch with us and we start the process we will screen the phone we will check if anything is missing we will send it to the data owner and we will be completing once everything is done we will be completing this alongside you through the process here i have included some very important information users interested in accessing special license data are advised to read the information in the document research data handling and security guide for users this has a guidance on storing and accessing data because the special license data because of the high risk that they carry with them they have a more tight storage and access requirements so they can only be accessed in an institutional setting for example it cannot be accessed privately at the home or be downloaded or stored in a personal device it has to be institutional access of course the guide has all the information we need and a lot of times for student dissertation so we will suggest from masters from phd and above usually to request such data because a lot of times master students or in lower undergraduate degrees they cannot meet the storage requirements that the data owner needs because they do not have an office there is no way to store and access it institutionally very important of course when applying for social survey data we strongly recommend to always check the less restrictive version of the data because the data will not be authorized for use to you unless the justification is clear and the data owner can understand that yes in need for this project the person needs this information which is only in the special license version of it for that purpose the left part is part of the details if we click on details and we scroll down we will see this part and the documentation so for every data set you can see details and documentation we read here that for understanding society there are two versions of the main one is available under the end user license so just for registered user and the other one under the special license the special license contains month and year of birth value so you see more details and also you have on the dictionaries you have all the variables that are included and a lot of times the data owners have also submitted here we have like a pdf which explains which variables are in the special license which are not in the less restrictive version so you read it and you make your application to explain why you need that more restricted version of the data set common question can I access special license data we said it's the institutional access can I access it from home of course the data are never allowed to be downloaded in a personal device there is a way this started during covid 19 it needs the completion of a specific form so first in order to know if my special license data are allowed for access from home we need to check the list of the data which are included in the permitted list and if it is we need to complete the appendings on the special license user agreement we saw earlier on the band in order to agree to some extra 12 additional conditions only once we have done those steps and the service has provided the okay then we can access from home and the access is never done by downloading the data that access the access is done through using an institutional device an institutional laptop at home in order to remote into the institutional device which has the data or the place which is stored always using the institutional VPN of course all the specifics and the details are here and I have included the link you will have access to the slides after the webinar moving next control data control data through secure labs so let's have a look what is the control data we provide access to data that are too confidential or sensitive to be released via download so the control the secure data cannot be downloaded this is a very valuable resource for researchers because these data are often accessed for their details geographies of the respondents location including post codes and grid references these data are not suitable of course for use by inexperienced researchers as an undergraduate and should only be used if absolutely necessary if data available at a lower level license can be used researchers are strongly encouraged to apply for the alternative versions typically this control data sets come from the office for national statistics and other large data providers such as the center for longitudinal studies the Institute for Social and Economic Research which is based next to us here at the University of Essex and those control data are only accessed via our secure lab what is secure lab is an online environment it's a remote access safe environment that enables the researcher to access undertake analysis without the need to download the data so the researcher is being provided with credentials for this environment we run technical checks I will show you the steps we do and the researcher is logging in on this environment no other online system is running and through this online environment they do the analysis we provide the software in the environment and then once the analysis is done the researcher is raising an output request that I have created this output in this folder and this is being checked then for statistical disclosure before this can be released to the researcher yes let me progress this important to note that the the user must be based in the UK to be able to access the data there is we call it the international data access network so through the international data access network we are trying to provide access to UK control data from some specific safe rooms in some specific European countries at the moment there is a safe room in IAB in Germany and I think one in France which is active at the moment where somebody can make an application to go there to access control data but a limited amount of data sets are available but please keep an eye if you are a researcher from abroad and you will need to access control data that are in the UK the rule of thumb is we need in order to access a cure lab we need to be based in the UK and have a UK affiliation some requirements there are slightly different applications so control data you might see that we the application differs if it is data provided by the ONS if the data are provided by anybody else except the ONS or by the smart energy research lab the region is here that the application is different and it's determined by the data you would like to access and the actual legal gateway to access this data ONS data we need to comply with the digital economy act then for non-ONS we need to comply with the UK GDPR and the smart energy code for smart energy lab so it is different the application procedure is slightly different it's not much different important to note we have said that we need to be based in the UK and have a UK affiliation we need to have completed safe researcher training this can be done through us we offer this training or if you have already done it with another provider we will confirm that and we will proceed for we need to become an accredited researcher via the ONS if we are applying for ONS data of course if I'm making an application for ONS data and non-ONS data the same project I need to follow both the application procedures and yes and we say that the data are not generally available to students we need to be experienced we need to prove that we are competent with using confidential micro data and finally your organization will also need to accept legal responsibility for you there is a form for everything to simplify it on our browse pages you will see that okay I want to apply for non-ONS data for ONS data smart energy lab or this is the outside of the UK you will tell me how do I know which one to follow the simple answer is the workflow so your workflow will tell you exactly what you need to do you will add the data set you will access you will go to the webpage you will find the data set you will read the documentation and the details to make for sure that yes indeed for my project I need to access the secure version of this data set and then you will create your non-commercial project you will assign the data set to your non-commercial project as we have already seen and you will see the actions on your workflow that you need to do so this is an example from the secure version of the understanding society so a non-ONS version so it tells us that the project lead needs to complete the research proposal every team member needs to complete an accredited researcher application every person needs to complete the secure access user agreement which will be counter signed by an official alter organization and then the training of course we will check your training and we will mark this as done we will send the application for approval once we have it we will take this for you a secure lab account our technical team will contact you directly to set up everything for you the setup of course for the secure lab is institutionally so it is accessed at your institution the IP used needs to be to belong to the organizations there are a lot of technical requirements I will not go in detail on that the right screenshot is similar but for a non-ONS excuse me so a data set provided by the ONS business structure database you see it's similar so the training is similar the setup is similar but the forms are different so we need the DA research project application and instead of completing a form to say to demonstrate our competency with using a confidential micro data here we need for ONS data to have obtained accredited researcher status of course once we click it gives us the guidance to do the process is usually of course there are quick and quick ones they depends on the complexity and how many data owners but we can say that the average is around two to three months at the moment from the application receivable to getting access via secure lab and the same question as we did earlier can I access secure lab from home so after everything has been done and your institutional access is okay and you can go to your institution and you can access the secure lab then again we need to check if the data sets are in the permitted list if they are in the permitted list there is an additional application process depending on what data we have so we just don't go and do it we make an application for home access on the on our home pages it has all the application process the agreement before we can be authorized to access secure lab from home of course recently our technical team has done some excellent changes and the access to secure lab now the technical requirements are easier of course making sure that the safety and the protection of the data are the first priority but we are trying to remove barriers as much as possible to show researchers can access secure lab from their institution and if possible from home as well thank you so we are reaching the end of our webinar is 1226 we will have some minutes for questions just before we go on that to give you some information on our help pages you can find everything information about the registration information about secure lab a COVID-19 we are applying of course now we're moving away from COVID-19 thankfully so we might change that soon to home working procedures and different types of data what my colleague Parousia covered and of course how to explore data online here you can find more tools on how to explore data online without a need to download them how to contact us anything you need we have our web form you select the type of your query and this goes directly to the correct team to support you and of course if that is not an option you can send us an email directly but we strongly suggest the use of the form because this is the way to ensure that you will receive a response and the email will not be overlooked we have the form and feedback as we said any feedback you would like to provide us again on our page you will find the feedback button in order to provide us with any suggestions we are here to support you and the research to get access to secondary social science data that's the importance to do the the work correctly so we can all benefit from it so please get in touch to let us know what we can do better and what we can improve thank you very much you can see as well again a link you will have access to the slides on twitter on youtube youtube you can find all current and past webinars as well and a lot of information our direct email and yes any questions i will open our chat on our q&a thank you so thank you for staying with us send us any questions you have on our help desk please call us feel free we are happy to work together with you for the common goal of promoting the research thank you and i wish you a very good day thank you everyone for joining and we hope to receive more queries on our help desk if you need any guidance please feel free to message us have a good day everybody


Computers keep changing the world, but their power and safety is limited by their rigid design. The T2TiLE project works for bigger and safer computing using living systems principles. Follow our progress here on T Tuesday Updates. I'm Dave Ackley. This is the 14th T Tuesday Update. Let's get into it. Officially there are six weeks to the episode 20 deadline that I set to have a grid of over 100 T2TiLEs manufactured and running together. I don't think we're going to get there the way I originally envisioned it. I do think fundamentally it's about making the commitment to try to get there and see how far we can get. I now think there's a chance that if everything goes well, or if things go as hard as I can, as hard as I have been pushing, that at least by episode 20, which is mid-February, the commitments will have been made. Contracts will have been signed, parts will have been ordered, and the goal would have it be off of my plate, that whatever delays take us beyond episode 20 are not because of me directly, but they're because people are actually out manufacturing or whatever it is and so forth. If we can get to that, I will say, okay, that it was a worthy goal to say episode 20 to have a grid, even though we go a little bit beyond it. Let me tell you what's been happening this week that leads me to say all this. Last week we built up a new Tile prototype and we're testing it more deeply than we had before and we're getting some crazy results. Couldn't get the locking from the southeast. The southeast corner was just messed up and eventually it actually debugged it all the way down to a solder bridge that I hadn't detected when I inspected the board. Wanted to show a picture of it last week, missed it, here it is. This is the southeast buffer chip that amplifies the signals and gates them so that the signals between the tiles don't get let through until they ought to be and they get through hopefully with enough signal strength and not too much signal strength that we can get a clean signal going. But there it is right there. That little blob between two pins connects them electrically and just makes everything go crazy. So, however, the other point was, yeah, here, that in the process of getting the oscilloscope, the bit scope running and so forth to debug this, I also saw that there were these little glitches like when this last, this bottom line here, the signal rises like in fact it's supposed to. It's a data signal that's going from zero to one. Sometimes I get these glitches on other lines and that's really bad. And the way that manifested itself was, and they've got this ringing in the analog signal there. It's not huge, but it's scary. The way it manifested itself is that the packet exchange, the packet protocol to send bits between the tiles was working okay. The locking mechanism to say, can I go, can I go, can you go, was working okay, but we put them together, the locking mechanism was causing bit errors in packets. That's very scary. I mean, as I said a few weeks ago, I'm not an electrical engineer. I really don't know anything about this stuff. I'm learning as I go and I've been trying to avoid what I call heroic engineering where you actually have to deal with all of the analog-y kinds of signals and so forth as much as possible. But now here we are, it's facing us. So I learned a little bit about, I read about signal integrity and all the things and I had looked at a little bit of it before, but I didn't really think it was going to bite me, but of course now it's biting me. And one of the things you're supposed to do is when you have signals that are running on different traces in the board, you don't want to be running them on top of each other or next to each other if you don't have to or not too close. You'd rather have them crossing at angles and you want to have nice ground planes, everything so that the signals are kind of isolated and just kind of cushioned. And I had tried all this. The board designs a four-layer board. One layer is dedicated to the ground, but it's in fact the same level layer. It's this layer, which feels like the top, but the way the design was and it's actually called the bottom. But so all of these little surface mount chips that mount on here, they have to have their own signal connections on this layer. So there have to be some holes in the ground plane. And you're supposed to minimize those as much as you can. I really didn't do a very good job of it. Here is a picture of the ground plane from what's called the Gerber files, which is the things that you actually send off to the manufacturer and they photo-etch onto copper boards and so forth and put it together. This is the ground plane from several prototypes ago, 2017 era. And you see that this is, you know, any of these big holes are genuine holes, but all of this kind of stuff in here where there's just areas of black, like right here there's a big area of black and so forth, those are a lot of just breaks in the ground plane. Now as things went along, I tried to do better. Here's one that's a bit more recent. This is, now you see the round edges because it's the, we're going with the holes instead of the notches on the end. This is better, but since I found the problem last week, I went crazy with this and adjusted parameters a little bit. And now this is what the ground plane looks like now.  Are these ones that change rapidly or not? Don't put them near each other and so forth. So this means we've got to do another prototype. I sent the prototype off to PCB Way in China. I dealt with them before and they seemed pretty good pretty fast and the results seemed okay. When I put the order in, in fact, they pushed back on it because I asked for the black solder mask.  But they actually pushed back on me to say that, well, you know, strictly speaking, if you want black, you can't do something really nice because you're using these little pins that are very close to each other. And it turns out, which I don't know that I knew this, that the black solder mask is sort of coarser. It's like thicker than the other colors, than some of the other colors. And if you pick one of the other colors, then you can actually have the solder mask going in between these teeny little pins and that's a good thing. So they were saying, you know, do you want me to not put the solder mask in between the pins because you can't do that with black? Do you want these colors or do you want to change your whole design so that you don't have just some pins too close together? So I said, let's change it to blue and so forth. So these current prototypes, which in fact, another thing I like a lot about PCBWay is they give you a lot of details of all the internal steps in making your circuit board. I don't even know what half of these things are. Well, I mean, at this point I sort of do about when they actually finish and so on. Here's when it was almost done. Get an email. This was a day or two ago. The order has shipped. And now, in fact, here it is. The prototypes along with a new stencil to solder paste them down is due here tomorrow. So we'll see how that goes. Now, the idea was that I'm going to put this thing. I'm going to try to bake one of these things and get it working as best I can as quickly as I can. And then take it immediately to the oscilloscope and see what kind of signal quality we're getting. Because this could be a major showstopper. If it's not actually possible to try to grab locks with the neighbors while you're exchanging data, that's a big problem. And we're going to have to think about redesigning or other things you can do. More components put serial resistors between the lines and so forth. But that could blow the schedule more seriously than it's been blown so far. But let's be optimistic and say, maybe we'll get it clean enough with the new ground and the more attention to the routing, that it'll be okay. I'm hopeful it may be. But that's not the only problem. So the idea would be that this one that is just coming back here is going to be the golden board. It'll be one that will not require any more changes. And I will send it out with a big check to make 200 of them or whatever it is for the build. And the idea would be to go back to PCBWay for the bigger build because they're happy to do that. And we have the tested with the little prototypes. But yes, January 30th to February 11th is Chinese New Year. And PCBWay, along with everything in China as far as I can tell, is closed. So if I don't get the board order in really soon, there's no way we're going to have the boards before the middle of February to even give to ETS to start manufacturing with and so forth. So they have schedule information to look at in detail and what it really boils down to is this. That by January 22nd, which is precisely two weeks from today, except it's in China time, so it's really two weeks from yesterday, I'd have to have the order in for the large board count if there was going to be a way to get them before Chinese New Years. Could it happen? Maybe? I don't know. It's about commitment. All right. That's the news on the board. From the Propaganda Division, we had our first T2Tile project public meeting. I thought it went great. Thanks so much again to Hay Andy X for the idea and for pulling it together and for Andrew Paul, Paul and AJ Zaffer for actually participating as Talking Heads along with me. Certainly open to doing another one and certainly open to having you, if you're willing, to show up as a Talking Head. If you are interested, I urge you to check into the Gitter.IM T2Tile chat room. Certainly I remember when I was looking at these things from the outside, hanging around the chat room was terrifying because people could poke at you and say, what are you doing? What do you want? And so forth. But our chat room is very friendly. You can hang around and not say a thing. And it's reasonably low traffic. So if you have a browser window, you can just sort of leave it there and check in on it. But that's where the people who are a little bit more actively involved tend to get together and have interactions. And that's in fact where we were pulling together people to be the Talking Heads for this first one. But there was really, whoops. Let's get back here. There was really more. There was a ton of chat on the YouTube side. Again, this is something I apologize for folks that I ended up having to be focused on clicking between who was going to actually be on the big screen when we were talking. Thought it was going to happen automatically. It didn't. So I really didn't pay as much attention to the live stream chat comments as I wish I had. And I apologize for that. Hey, Andy, pulled a lot of them into the conversation and that was good. But if I missed your comment, I'm really sorry. And there were lots of interesting things that I sort of saw go by. And David Newhouse, one of the biology types who showed up, that was great. Folks, I mean, even though this is really nerdy and it's really, you know, very electrical engineering-y right now, which of course I'm going to compensate that. I'm going to be very software engineering-y for a while, which I'm better at, but it's going to be nerdy. But I absolutely really want to try hard to make room for other fields that, because this touches everything. Once you say we're bringing space back in, it's not about living in an abstraction where it's all math. Things are actually spatialized. It touches everything. It touches art. It touches architecture. And it certainly touches all the life sciences. So I really invite folks to bring their thoughts, bring their questions, bring their ideas along with it. So that's great. And I think definitely we should do that again in a month or two. We'll see how it goes. There was a bunch of new statistics. We had 11 concurrent viewers. You know, they were watching all these different streams. I don't even know what this data really means. And I could download a little spreadsheet of what people were doing. And they were from countries all over the place. There were five people from Germany watching, two of them watching simultaneously, three people watching simultaneously from Mexico, four people watching simultaneously from Great Britain. Thank you for checking in. It's exciting. I've been working on this stuff for a long time. And on the one hand, I don't really expect people to get it. But on the other hand, it is get a bull and part of this entire process for me since 2008 is to figure out ways to express it at multiple levels of detail and more and less nerdiness where I don't feel like I'm being unethical at any of the levels of presentation, but it's at a level that people can find something to hang on to. And so it's just seeing folks popping in from all over the place.  But even so, I think it was great. So that was good. All right. And mostly what this week has been about for me is about parts, parts, parts, getting parts, ordering parts, laying down the money. So for example, I was talking about that driver chip, the buffer chip, the southeast buffer chip. This is the chip. And this is a major part of the T2 tile because every single tile needs six of these chips, which means if we're going to have 150 or 200 tiles, that's like 1,300 of these and 1,200 of these things that we might need, or what is it? I can't even multiply on the fly here. But the net result of all of this is that, you know, there's an order for you. $1,600 had another order that was over $800 as well this week. And yeah, 1,300 of them. Yeah, 1,300. And in fact, they are there in. So here is $2,600 worth of parts for T2 tiles. It's big boxes from Mouser. These other boxes are from Arrow. But that's not even all the parts that we need. So far, I'm filling in the dance card pretty well for the chips and the electronics and all that stuff. The board I just talked about for PCBWay. But there's all this other stuff as well. There are these little pin cushion things, all these connectors you got to get. And the cases, the actual Beaglebone greens, that's the system on module. That's sort of the brains of the whole thing. And then the display that plugs in on top. And that's what I want to talk about right now. This is one of the displays here. It's a busted one. But you can see it's really just sort of a generic little thing. It's a 3.5 inch R-Pi display Raspberry Pi designed for a Raspberry Pi. But we're making our own custom board so we can match up to the pins here without a lot of trouble. I have a previous buy of these. I got 70 of them or something like that. But I need another major buy if we're going to have on the order of 150 of these things going forward. So I went back to AliExpress, the sort of slightly less terrifying access to buying stuff from China primarily, also Singapore and Asia in general, and started looking around. I mean, basically it needs to be this specific item. And so here's one company that's selling it 320 by 480. It's $12.60 each with free shipping via AliExpress standards, which is 19 to 39 days. So we're basically already dead if that's how we're doing shipping. They do offer a variety of other shipping modes. You can click on this little thing and pop it up. And so if you say send it to me via DHL, yes, they will do that. And now the price is $41 each. So this other store at AliExpress that I had dealt with before for these things was selling them for $9.99 a piece, which I liked that price. But again, it was standard shipping for 30, 19 to 39 days. And they did not even offer DHL. And this is where I'm now trying to be outside the nerd comfort zone. So what do you do? You got to negotiate. You got to haggle.  It just goes against my nerd guts in every possible way. But I did it. So I got in touch with them. I've learned from dealing with vendors before that you got to go crazy with the emojis and be smiling and winking and everything all the time. At least they do. So I figure I ought to do it back. Could you quote me in order with DHL shipping? And for 50 pieces. And that's even though I really wanted like 90, you know. And they said, hi, friend. Yes, for 50 pieces, we can give you $10.50 a piece with free DHL shipping. Now, compared to $40 a piece, it's a pretty good deal. But I thought really it ought to be able to do better. And I thought, you know, if I'm going to haggle, I have to haggle just as a matter of self-respect. And if they don't give a little, I'd have to say no. It's just sort of the human thing about people have to make fair with it. So I said, well, thanks for the quick note. Can we do a little better? Like $10 a piece with DHL shipping if I up to my quantity to 75 like that. That was pretty reasonable. And they said, no, this is already a good price. So I hope to get your understanding. And now this is where I'd never know what to do. Okay, now do I have to walk away? But I can't walk away. It's still a much better deal than the other place. So I thought of a new thing to say. Yeah, you offer a great price, but it's not a good price, but it's not a great price. I use the shy emoji and I up my price. How about $10.20 for 90, which is actually the quantity that I wanted. And they took it. And so then we ended up with a customized order, a special link that she made while he, whoever it is, Sophie Zhang for 918 bucks for 90 of these displays to drive these things. These are going to be the things. And they cut and paste exactly the tax DHL shipping and so on and so forth. And I've now paid it. So it's about commitment. The next update will be out in a week. Thanks for being here. Thanks for watching.