‘Safe projects’ assesses the research goals and the potential benefits to understand the risks associated with each project undertaken. It asks the question ‘is this appropriate use and management of the data?’.
Examples of questions/issues being addressed:
- What is the purpose of the access request?
- Is this an ethical and lawful use of the data?
- What is the benefit to society or to the organisations that are sharing the data?
- Is there a data management plan in place?
- What happens to the data at the end of the project?
Part of the concerns to be addressed is whether the risks to the individual outweigh the benefits to society. Risk assessments tend to be focused on the risk to the individual (privacy loss) or the data holder (legal consequences or reputational loss), but these should also include society’s risk of opportunities foregone: what happens if refusing access to data for research means that it takes an extra 10 years to develop a cancer treatment?
Safe projects should also consider things like post-project planning, ensuring that consent if designed to be ethical and meet the project needs, and identifying who has responsibility for data governance. So it can be seen that there is a significant overlap between ‘safe projects’ and general research governance to ensure that a project is both effective and ethical.
Possible ways to achieve ‘safe projects’:
- A solid project approval process would require researchers to submit detailed proposals which outline objectives, data use and access and expected risks and benefits
- Use ethics committees or data governance boards to assess the safety and validity of the project.
- Use regular audits to monitor the projects, to ensure continuous compliance