Today, the New Brunswick government introduced new legislation that enables public organizations to store prepared data at the New Brunswick Institute for Research, Data and Training (NB-IRDT).
This legislation will broaden substantially the range of administrative data that NB-IRDT is able to receive, enabling public bodies to store prepared data sets at the Institute. Prepared data is record-level data that has been collected by government departments and agencies, but from which all directly identifying information (such as name, address, Medicare number) has been removed. The data will be used for research to help inform the development of data-driven public policy and more cost-effective program interventions.
Located at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton campus, NB-IRDT provides a central location for researchers to access provincial administrative health data sets. Data sets provided through NB-IRDT are linkable to allow for more research opportunities. The MSSU partners with NB-IRDT to facilitate researcher access to the NB-IRDT data platform.
Ted McDonald, Director of NB-IRDT and Co-Principal Investigator of the MSSU, stated, “This is a very exciting development. There is a large research community in New Brunswick interested in doing policy relevant research for the benefit of our province and this will greatly expand the scope of work that can be done, while continuing to respect the privacy of citizens.”
To read more about the new legislation, click here.