Federation ready? SATRE 2.0 is here

HIC is a part of the Scottish Safe Haven Network, which RDS coordinates on behalf of the four Regional Safe Havens and National Safe Haven.

The first of its kind in the UK, SATRE – Standard Architecture for Trusted Research Environments – was co-designed by TRE owners and informed by researchers and the public. SATRE is a self-assessment tool, providing a comprehensive framework for building, operating, and evaluating TREs across academia, healthcare, industry and government.

Originally built on the four pillars of Information Governance, Computing Technology and Information Security, Data Management, and Supporting Capabilities, this update to version 2.0 has added a fifth: Federation.

As both the UK TRE landscape and requests for research data become increasingly complex, a standard approach to federation is crucial to ensure that sensitive data research can be conducted safely. Like for version 1.0, published in 2023, the community were key to shaping this new pillar. Initial community workshops were held as part of the UK TRE Conference and at a TREvolution event, with contributions from a diverse range of participants across the system. The conversation was continued through Collaboration Café events for the wider community, including researchers and members of the public, to review and refine.

Dr Christian Cole, Co-Director of TREvolution and Reader in Health Informatics, University of Dundee, said: “SATRE has already started to change the landscape by defining what a TRE is and informing a baseline for sensitive data research in the UK. Researchers want to be able to access more varied datasets to be able to answer complex questions impacting us as a society. This is where federation and SATRE 2.0 comes in. The original four pillars helped individual TREs assess themselves against shared community standards. The fifth extends the standards in providing best practice guidelines on how to work together securely, benefitting researchers and ultimately the public.”

Alongside the addition of the federation pillar, the existing architecture and specification have been updated in response to feedback.

In reflection of its importance, public involvement and engagement is now listed as a specific capability within Information Governance, with statements strengthened from recommended to mandatory. The involvement of the public in TRE operations and oversight is important for demonstrating transparency and trustworthiness, and ensures the inclusion of people and voices from different backgrounds, experiences and identities.

A regulatory compliance requirement has also been upgraded from recommended to mandatory, and new machine learning/artificial intelligence requirements have been added within the data management pillar.

Kate O’Sullivan, Chief Data Officer for Research Data Scotland, said: “The SATRE specification is an invaluable resource for TREs to measures themselves against an agreed community standard. This new emphasis given to federation within SATRE 2.0 reflects the increasing importance for different secure environments to work together to assist impactful research.

It’s also fantastic to see that public engagement and involvement has been regraded within this update, an acknowledgement of its crucial place in ensuring public trust in how secure data is handled.

The Health Informatics Centre at the University of Dundee continues to excel in developing these shared community standards. It’s great to see a key member of the Scottish Safe Haven Network having such impact across the UK.”

You can review all the changes within the latest release here.  You can also find out more about the work on SATRE 2.0 in this blog from Tim Machin at UCL. 

The SATRE project has been funded by DARE UK, most recently under the £6.2m TREvolution Transformational Programme, in support of a multidisciplinary team including UCL, The Alan Turing Institute, Research Data Scotland, Ulster University, public contributors and led by the University of Dundee.

TREvolution is a programme of work shaping the future of sensitive data research in the UK by promoting shared standards and building trustworthy innovations to make research faster and more effective for the public good. SATRE is one of the areas of focus for TREvolution to build trust and accelerate research.