The Five Safes framework is a set of principles enabling data services to provide safe research access to data. It has become the best practice in data protection whilst also fulfilling the demands of open science and transparency.
It is a framework for helping people, especially those that have responsibility for data access systems, to make decisions concerning the most effective and secure use of data that is potentially confidential or sensitive.
The Five Safes break down the decisions surrounding data access and use into five related, but separate, dimensions:
- Safe projects – is this use of data appropriate, lawful, ethical and sensible?
- Safe people– can the user/s be trusted to use the data in an appropriate manner?
- Safe data – is there a disclosure risk in the data itself?
- Safe settings – does the access facility limit unauthorised use or mistakes?
- Safe outputs – are the statistical results non-disclosive?
All five ‘safes’ must be considered jointly to evaluate whether a data access system provides an ‘acceptable’ solution.