Five Safes
The “Five Safes” is a set of guidelines for accessing data in order to carry out research. It was originally developed by the Office of National Statistics in the UK. It is now being used to safeguard access to data for use in research.
The guidelines are used to assess research projects before access to data is allowed.
The "Five Safes" are:
- Safe People: for example a process to approve researchers
- Safe Projects: project proposals are reviewed by a dedicated governance board
- Safe Settings: access to data is only through a secure environment
- Safe Data: data is anonymised so that individuals cannot be identified by researchers
- Safe Output: analysis outputs checked by data custodians prior to release