How many RSEs (and related roles) does it take to change a lightbulb in a cage? How RSEs are shaping UK TRE infrastructure

Abstract

RSEs and related roles are critical in building secure platforms that allow researchers to access sensitive data, such as in health and social care. The gold standard for safely providing access to this data are Trusted Research Environments (TREs), also called Secure Data Environments, but most are run by single institutions and often operate in isolation. This isolation is now hampering research. For example, studies on rare diseases require data from multiple TREs, but current technologies and processes typically do not support this. The TREvolution transformational programme brought together diverse teams of people and roles to examine the barriers to the analysis of data across TREs, and to find and demonstrate solutions. In TREvolution the term “RSE” encompasses a very wide range of skills and expertise, including software development, managing production cloud infrastructure, understanding statistical tests and limits of anonymisation, creating libraries to support data analysis workflows, developing specifications for metadata, defining APIs and architectures, and integrating with existing IT systems. In addition there are many more adjacent roles that are often underappreciated and which overlap with RSEs. These include public interest and engagement professionals who bring together members of the public and technical project members, information governance specialists, community managers, project managers, and user interface designers. We’ll talk about some of these roles, and how they’re contributing to the success of TREvolution. We’ll also look at some of the challenges faced by this large consortium which is bringing together multiple technical projects under a common set of project pillars.