A high level audit of administrative datasets in government departments

Government departments create many administrative datasets and commission survey studies, some of which contain potentially useful information about skills supply and demand, but these are restricted in access and use, hidden deep inside government departments. Mariette Visser explains the importance of these resources and suggests an inter-government initiative to encourage better knowledge and usage of administrative database resources. The LMIP conducted a large-scale 'audit' across government, to identify and trace administrative datasets potentially relevant to skills planning. The existence of an administrative dataset however, does not tell us anything about how relevant and useful it is for skills planning purposes or whether the quality of the data is reliable.