Rebuilding a Resilient Britain: Data and Evaluation Areas of Research Interest across Government

The aim of this paper is to share learning from the Areas of Research Interest (ARIs) relating to data and evaluation, and the subsequent academic-policy engagement process hosted by the Government Office for Science (GOS) and facilitated by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)/GOS ARI Fellows. It is hoped that these learnings will feed into relevant initiatives that are currently underway at, for example, Administrative Data Research UK and the ESRC. 2. Background ARIs are statements of priority research areas identified by government departments. As proposed by the Nurse Review of Research Councils, all departments publish an annually-refreshed set of ARIs to promote more effective engagement with research communities. In 2019, two Fellows were appointed jointly by ESRC and GOS to promote academic-policy engagement around ARIs. This involved working with departments to understand how ARIs were produced, how they were used, and what resources might be required to optimise engagement with governmental ARIs. Analysis of existing ARIs identified cross-cutting issues and themes of importance across departments. Two themes identified as priorities across multiple departments were 1) data sharing, linkages, and ethics, and 2) evaluation and replication. Between April-November 2020, the Fellows ran the Rebuilding a Resilient Britain programme which brought together researchers, policy officials and funders to focus on groups of ARIs identified as critical to supporting the government response to COVID-19 in the mid- to long-term. Nine Working Groups identified existing evidence, key messages for decision-makers arising from this evidence, and gaps in the current research. Almost half of the new research gaps identified (43 out of 103) were about data and evaluation. Analyses of reports submitted by these groups produced high-level insights on cross-cutting key messages and research themes relating to data and evaluation.