The partnership, which will initially run for two years, builds on the organisations’ existing work together, which focuses on helping policymakers to examine issues like poverty, the cost-of-living crisis and the value of early interventions.

Operating from the new Edinburgh Futures Institute, the two organisations said they would combine their areas of expertise to strengthen their shared commitment to public good.

The partnership aims to formalise and strengthen their ongoing cooperation in key areas, including joint exploration opportunities for collaborative research and development projects, and information sharing on relevant sector developments and public engagement.

Other areas of focus include collaborative research and insights in areas of mutual interest, including financial and public sector data.

The collaboration will focus on sharing best practices and exploring opportunities for joint service development while maintaining distinct areas of expertise in health and financial data research.

Smart Data Foundry is a not-for-profit subsidiary of the University of Edinburgh that was founded to use financial data in research and insights.

Research Data Scotland is dedicated to simplifying access to public sector data and is a partnership between leading Scottish universities and public bodies which is funded by the Scottish government.

Magdalena Getler, head of academic engagement at Smart Data Foundry, said: “This partnership allows us to harness the potential of combining financial data from the private sector with public sector data.

“The focus will be on increasing the discoverability of data for evidence, knowledge generation and ultimately insights and evidence-based policymaking. Key to this is providing a researcher-centred infrastructure and type of data and functionality that researchers need.”

Layla Robinson, chief partnership and strategy officer at RDS, said: “Our organisations have lots of parallels – opening up systems to allow research to take place faster and acting in the interest for public good, for example. 

“The pandemic accelerated the expansion of our digital lives – so many services moved online, creating large amounts of data about spending habits and shopping behaviours. Securely accessing and researching this kind of anonymised banking data can help us better understand how we live.”