The Research Data Management team and Research IT Services jointly run regular drop-in sessions.  These sessions are open to all UCL research staff and research students. 

Someone from the Research Data Management team will be there to support you with

• data management planning
• best practice in storing and sharing data
• complying with funder requirements

– at all stages of the research lifecycle.

If you’d like to come along to one of drop-in sessions, please contact the RDM team at lib-researchsupport@ucl.ac.uk with a summary of your research data query beforehand.

Representatives from all of the RITS service areas teams will also be on hand to answer questions or problems related the following areas:

• research programming
• workflow automation
• finding tools and services for your research programmes
• high performance computing
• handling large datasets
• handling personal and GDPR special category data
• data storage

For RITS queries, there’s no need to book, but the RITS team can make sure there’ll be someone there to help with your problem if you email rits@ucl.ac.uk, ideally two days before the session.

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To celebrate the 3rd international Love Data Week, several Research Data Management teams from London universities have joined forces. More than 15 free events are taking place across Bloomsbury from Monday 12th to Friday 16th of February.

Most events are open to all UCL research staff and research students; here is an overview:

• Get Ready for GDPR: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 1pm
• What’s my Research Data?: Monday, 2pm
• UCL Research IT & Data Management drop-in: Tuesday, 10am
• Get Your Data In Shape (Organizing and Documenting): Tuesday, 2pm
• Working With Audio Visual Data: Wednesday, 11am
• Consumer Data Research Centre drop-in: Wednesday, 11am-2pm
• Working With Personal Data: Wednesday, 2pm
• Making the Most of Your Research Data: Thursday, 11am
• UCL Introduction to Digital Scholarship and Open Research: Thursday, 1.30pm
• Data Management Planning: Thursday, 3pm
• Introduction to UK Data Service: Friday, 2-3.3opm

A full listing of events is available to share.

For any UCL-specific questions, please contact the UCL Research Data Support officers at lib-researchsupport@ucl.ac.uk.

The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect in May 2018. It will replace the current Directive and apply to all EU member states without the need for national legislation. The implementation will require comprehensive changes to the way in which organisations, like UCL, collect, use and transfer personal data.

Please see the UCL Data Protection Office’s guidance on the impact of the GDPR on how researchers will seek consent, on privacy notices, data breaches and more.

Following the agreement between the European Commission and United States in 2016, the ‘EU-US Privacy Shield’ is now in force and is therefore the main means of allowing personal data to be transferred to the US.

The EU-US Privacy Shield replaces the invalidated Safe Harbour agreement whilst providing additional obligations to protect personal data, as well as establishing annual monitoring and reporting.

Any new agreement to transfer personal data (including transient transfer) can only be done if the US recipient (this includes universities) has signed up to the Privacy Shield Framework.

Researchers planning on transferring data to the US to a recipient that has not signed up to the Privacy Shield Framework, or who are already working under an existing Safe Harbour agreement, should contact the UCL Data Protection Office (data-protection@ucl.ac.uk).

Further information about the EU-US Privacy Shield can be found on the UCL Data Protection webpages.

In the Security Knowledge Base, the UCL Information Security team has put together useful advice to help you assess whether using cloud services is safe. The guide enable to consider three important questions:

1. Is the cloud service secure enough for this type of information?
2. Is it compliant – and will it remain compliant – with relevant legislation, contractual or regulatory requirements?
3. Are the other risks that arise from using this service acceptable?

The guide also provides key information on personal data protection, Intellectual Property Right and risk assessment.

If you need an alternative to commercial services you can use the in-house UCL Drop Box.

Much research data about people – even sensitive data – can be shared ethically and legally if researchers employ strategies of informed consent, anonymisation and controlling access to data.  However, researchers obtaining data from people are expected to maintain high ethical standards and comply with relevant legislation and duties.

This guidance is generally provided by professional bodies, host institutions and funding organaisations. The laws that govern the use of data, in addition to the duties of confidentiality, include the following Acts:

• Data Protection Act (1998);
• Freedom of Information Act (2000);
• Human Rights Act (Article 8) (1998);
• Mental Capacity Act (2005); and
• Statistics and Registration Services Act (2007).

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The European Court of Justice has recently ruled that the European Commission (EC) decision on the use of the US Safe Harbour agreement for transferring personal data from the European Economic Area to the USA was invalid.

UCL Data Safe Haven should be used to store personal and sensitive data. Information and guidance is available.

Ethical and legal issues should always be considered when storing and preserving your research data.

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