The Department of Health’s Data Outputs Team offers a Quality Assurance service for content data prior to release to Data Applicants. Data delivered are checked for compliance with relevant approvals and documentation prior to release.
Data files are checked for:
- Compliance with cohort selection and extraction filtering criteria
- Compliance with approved variable lists
- No inadvertent disclosure of identifying information
- Internal consistency of linkage keys
- Standardised data format where possible
Supporting information is also prepared during the Quality Assurance process, including the collation of data dictionaries, reference documentation about how the data was prepared and any notes that may impact on data analysis.
Data is encrypted and released to Data Applicants via secure online file transfer to approved personnel.