Just looking at the plain brick building on the UNB campus, you’d never know that the activities of the New Brunswick Institute for Research, Data and Training (NB-IRDT) touch every person living in NB.
NB-IRDT is the research data centre for the province of New Brunswick, housing personal data collected from government services or programs. Since 2015, it has been transforming the way provincial policymakers operate, enabling them to make decisions by drawing on trustworthy data from multiple sources.
Overcoming Data Siloes
Before NB-IRDT was established, a policymaker could access only the data available within their department. As a result, decisions got made based on partial information, even when more complete data existed elsewhere within the provincial government.
The visionary academic behind NB-IRDT, Dr. Ted McDonald, began his career as an economist, studying labor and health. He believes policy-making should be grounded in the experience of the individual, not defined by department boundaries around data collection.
New Brunswickers, he says, live their lives as persons, not data categories. Over a lifetime, the typical citizen interacts with multiple departments, such as Health, Education and Early Childhood Development, Post-Secondary Training and Labor, and Social Development (the funder of nursing homes).
To assess how a policy will affect the population, then, decision-makers need to see the whole picture. Only by connecting multiple data points can they understand how a change to a service or program could affect demands on services or programs across the government.
The Power of Linked Data
By linking data sets, NB-IRDT researchers can provide a long-range view. For example, imagine that the government decides to decrease the number of subsidized daycare spots. Down the road, by connecting the daycare data with data from health services and programs, policy-makers could see the broad social repercussions of the change.
NB-IRDT now leads Canada in facilitating these kinds of connections, and their role as data steward for the province has been enshrined in legislation. This legal protection for interdepartmental data-sharing is unique to NB and a key factor in NB-IRDT’s success.
By leveraging multiple data sets, Dr. McDonald and his team have provided data-rich insights into such critical issues as immigration, retention of graduates, and the impact of health programs for at-risk mothers. Current projects include research to examine the effects of expanding the scope of practice for pharmacists, the outcomes of experiential learning programming, and ways to mitigate health hazards caused by climate change.
Dr. McDonald now shares NB-IRDT’s practices with organizations across Canada and internationally. Having grown his team to more than 50 researchers and support staff, he is keen to push the boundaries of “multijurisdictional research,” especially in the domain of healthcare, where data restrictions make it challenging for provinces to learn from one another.
In less than a decade, NB’s data centre has developed a reputation for innovation that is attracting new partners, expanding the knowledge base for policy-makers, and inspiring researchers around the world.
Says Dr. McDonald, “We've got this very collaborative environment here. We can be this kind of test bed, show people what's possible.”
