Dutch social scientists typically follow three steps in acquiring sensitive data.

First, they find (sensitive) data through the ODISSEI Portal, which aggregates public metadata records from data sets that are relevant to the Dutch social science community and makes them searchable through a single interface. Having your metadata searchable there will make your organisations more visible.

Second, once researchers find the relevant data, they can request access via the ODISSEI Data Access Broker (DAB). The DAB harmonises potential providers’ access conditions and processes and will (semi-)automatically pre-process the conditions on behalf of the researcher and provider. This should make the data access request process much quicker and less time consuming. 

Third, based on the information pre-processed by the DAB, you decide on the access request in a simple user interface. If an agreement is reached with the user, ODISSEI facilitates you in making the data available to the individual researcher. This is typically achieved by transferring the data to a Trusted Research Environment, which guarantees that the data cannot leave without your approval. 

Add your metadata to the ODISSEI Portal

Adding metadata to the ODISSEI Portal helps increase compliance of the associated data with the FAIR principles. The ODISSEI Portal offers:

• Increased Findability of datasets among the social science community: this is achieved by making the metadata searchable via a single interface, instead of requiring users to visit each single repository when searching data. From the ODISSEI Portal the metadata can be harvested and indexed by other (inter)national portals and aggregators, increasing the visibility of your data and organisation. 
• Increased Accessibility of data: by further standardising the display of access conditions and usage restrictions, the ODISSEI Data Access Broker system makes data more accessible for the research community, while aiding data providers in assessing data access requests through (semi-)automatic data access policy management
• Increased Interoperability of the metadata: The ODISSEI Portal offers functionalities to display data linkage opportunities across data collections. Metadata from different providers are also aggregated in a common metadata schema, and the Portal metadata can be exported in different standardised formats. 
• Together, the functionalities offered by the ODISSEI Portal facilitate the Reuse of data by the social science research community and policy and operations experts. 

Join the growing list of metadata providers and reach a broad research community. Others that have gone before you include Statistics Netherlands (CBS), the LISS panel, the DANS Data Station SSH, the social science records in DataverseNL and in the Dataverse of the International Institute for Social History (IISH).

Use the Data Access Broker

By implementing one of the default ODISSEI data access processes, your access conditions will be specified in a machine-readable format. For instance, you can specify that users affiliated with a Dutch university that signed your terms and conditions should be granted access. 

The Data Access Broker knows information on the users: they can prove their identity and affiliation by logging in via SURF Research Access Management. In the same interface, they can accept your terms and conditions. The access conditions and characteristics of the user enable the Data Access Broker to automatically pre-process a data access request, resulting in an advice to the provider to grant access. 

Your actual decision on the request will be a manual step; making metadata available through ODISSEI does not result in any obligation to actually provide access to data.

Instructions for using the Data Access Broker are forthcoming. 

Make the data available in a closed environment

After you reach a decision, ODISSEI facilitates you in making the data available. We recommend that you place the sensitive data in a so-called Trusted Research Environment, which is under your complete control and guarantees that the data cannot leave without your approval. 

ODISSEI offers SANE, an off-the-shelf virtual Trusted Research Environment that is of no cost to the provider. SANE is a closed-off virtual machine where data providers authorise researchers to analyse their sensitive data using pre-approved software like R and Python. This setup minimises the risk of data leak while enabling researchers to conveniently study the data.

You can make the appropriate dataset available through SANE, after which the researcher will perform his or her analysis. Upon completion, the researcher places the desired output result (for instance a chart and aggregate statistics) in an output folder, for you to check. Only if you decide to release these results, can they be exported from SANE. After completion, the SANE environment is archived.  

Some more characteristics of SANE:

• Data providers can typically set up SANE and share their data within 30 minutes in collaboration with a researcher.
• SANE follows GDPR stipulations, leaves the provider in complete control and is designed for data minimisation.
• SANE follows the Five Safes framework for sensitive data access, which is used by many providers around the globe, including Statistics Netherlands (CBS). 
• SANE runs on the ISO 27001-certified SURF Research Cloud platform and passed an independent thorough penetration test. 
• SANE is free of charge for data providers.

Next steps

If you are interested in using the ODISSEI infrastructure to facilitate sharing (sensitive) data with researchers, do not hesitate to reach out. 

Detailed instructions for data providers are displayed on the following pages:

• Instructions for adding your metadata to the ODISSEI Portal
• Instructions for using the Data Access Broker are forthcoming
• Instructions for providing data access via SANE (SURF website)

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash