In April 2013 the ESRC announced new funding of £64 million to be invested in Big Data, which forms part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's announcement of capital funding for the eight ‘great British technologies’ in his Autumn Statement. The ESRC's Big Data Network will support the development of a network of innovative investments which will strengthen the UK's competitive advantage in Big Data. The core aim of this network is to facilitate access to different types of data, thereby stimulating innovative research and the development of new methods to undertake that research.
This network has been divided into three phases. In Phase 1 of the Big Data Network the ESRC has invested in the development of the Administrative Data Research Network (ADRN), which will provide access to de-identified administrative data collected by government departments for research use. Phase 2 will focus primarily on business data and local government data, and Phase 3, will focus on Third Sector data and social media data.
We are now inviting proposals for Phase 2, which will commission a series of Business and Local Government Data Research Centres which will deliver the infrastructure to support access to business or local government data or both, for the mutual benefit of researchers and data owners. The primary aim of these Centres is to contribute to the development of data infrastructure around business and local government data through collaboration with data owners, and to provide a service to enable access to that data for the wider research community. All the commissioned Centres will be expected to provide safe and secure access to a range of extremely rich datasets.
For a five-year period, the budget for each Centre application will be a maximum of £7 million. It is expected that the value of proposals will vary depending on the scale and scope of the Centre and how much it is built around existing resources. Costs should be calculated on a full economic costs (fEC) basis. As per standard funding rules, the ESRC will contribute 80 per cent of the total budget.
Proposals must be led by a single UK academic institution approved by the Research Councils. We expect that there will be only one proposal per applying host institution. However, the ESRC will also accept more than one proposals per applying host institution, where it can be clearly demonstrated that the proposed centres within the same host institution will be for distinct and non-overlapping substantive areas – for example a different sector, or area of focus. Institutions can, also, be involved in more than one bid as a collaborative partner.
Full proposals must be submitted via the Joint Electronic Submission System (Je-S) by 16.00, 8 October 2013.
Enquiries relating to technical aspects of the Je-S form should be addressed to:
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