DataFirst at International Data Week 2025
DataFirst’s Lynn Woolfrey gave a presentation at International Data Week (IDW) 2025, held from 13–16 October in Brisbane, Australia. IDW is a biennial landmark data event organised by the Committee on Data of the International Science Council (ISC) and the ISC’s World Data System, along with the Research Data Alliance. This year’s event was co-organised and hosted by the Australian Research Data Commons. IDW brings together data scientists and other stakeholders to exchange ideas and expertise on data use for the good of science and society. The event included 107 sessions and drew 807 attendees from 75 countries. Lynn’s presentation focused on the work of DataFirst in rescuing at-risk African datasets from now-shuttered US federal government sites to ensure this data is preserved and shared as a societal good.
Other datasets published in November were:
The Department of Basic Education’s Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System (LURITS). The LURITS data is administrative data from the DBE’s School Administration and Management System. LURITS includes unit-record data for each learner in South Africa, from Grade R through to Grade 12. The data is published in three rounds, for 2017-2021; 2022-2023 and 2024.
University of Cape Town Student Admissions Data 2006-2025
This dataset was created from administrative data on student applications to the University of Cape Town, and covers academic years 2006-2014; 2015-2019; and 2020-2025. To ensure data confidentiality direct identifiers have been removed from the data and the data is only made available to accredited researchers through a Trusted Research Environment, DataFirst's secure Remote Access Data Enclave.