Department of Justice and Equality publishes Data and Research Strategy 2018-2020

30th July 2018

The Department of Justice and Equality have recently released their Data and Research Strategy 2018-2020, designed to support the delivery of “a safe, fair and inclusive Ireland”. The primary objective of the Strategy is to ensure better management, integration and use of knowledge. Key to this is ensuring better collaboration and information sharing between the Department, its Agencies and stakeholders.

The Department’s Data and Research Strategy has six goals: 

• Leadership in and oversight of Justice and Equality Policy and Delivery.
• A safe, secure Ireland.
• Access to justice. 
• An equal and inclusive society. 
• A fair and balanced immigration and protection regime.
• Develop our people, culture systems and process.

In order to achieve these goals, some of the actions the Department have identified are:

• Establish a Data Evaluation Research and Analytics unit working in the corporate area. 
• Develop Data Governance Structures.
• Conform to Statistical code of conduct. 
• Comply with General Data Protection Regulation obligations.
• Support the development of the analytic capacity of the organisation.
• Fill the Data and Research Principal Officer post.
• Establish appropriate and effective operational links across the Department, its Agencies and offices in order to improve data collection and analysis. 

The Data and Research Strategy also includes a range of research requirements for the Department, which gives direction to the systematic conduct of research to produce quality results and detailed reporting.

The Strategy is welcomed by IPRT. The development of a criminal justice agency data agreement by the DJE is Action 1.2 of our annual ‘Progress in the Penal System’ report.

To read the Strategy, click here.