To ask the First Minister and deputy First Minister to outline how their Department shares data in order to better inform the policy development process.

The Department’s Data Protection Officer works with business areas to ensure that Data Sharing Agreements are in place, where required, to inform the development of various policy areas. This work is guided by the Information Commissioner's Office’s code of practice, which ensures that, where data sharing is required, it is done in accordance with the law and in a safe and compliant manner.

Several key strategic policy areas of the Department have benefited to date, including:

addressing the needs of refugees and asylum seekers, where TEO works collaboratively with, for example, other NICS Departments and Agencies, the Home Office, local Councils, and charitable organisations;

the Public Appointments process;

the Truth Recovery Process here in respect of Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries, and Workhouses;

Historical Institutional Abuse; and

the Victims & Survivors Service.

TEO has been working with NISRA to bring improvements in the availability and accessibility of equality data.

As part of the draft PfG, NISRA statisticians have developed a “Wellbeing dashboard” to inform future iterations of the PfG, which uses the latest NISRA data to show the wellbeing of people as individuals, communities and as a society across ten domains of wellbeing.

TEO has been involved in the development of guidance, published by NISRA, aimed at improving the harmonisation of collection and reporting of equality data; and has been working with NISRA on the early stages of the development of an equality data tool.

The objective is to provide access to readily consumable data visualisations, for use by officials, stakeholders and the general public.