Secure eResearch Platform (SeRP)

The Challenge

Data custodians require a robust, accredited, regulated and functional environment for the governance, control and management of sensitive data, and research users seek simple and secure access to sensitive data and associated tools.

The Response

The Secure eResearch Platform project is a national collaboration to deliver a secure, trusted and scalable environment for data governance, control and management services for data custodians and secure remote data analysis environments for research users.

Such an environment is needed to overcome significant barriers to making sensitive data FAIR, providing assurances to other data custodians regarding confidential and secure data handling, and ensuring researchers comply with ethical and regulatory requirements.

The project deploys and manages a proven technology called the Secure eResearch Platform (SeRP) Software Stack as a managed, nationally consistent service. 

The SeRP service will build trust between data custodians, researchers and their collaborators and enable data curation, linkage, extraction, sharing with access control, de-identification and analysis.

The project involves the following elements:

The Partners

• Monash University
• Curtin University
• QCIF
• Sax Institute
• Swansea University
• UNSW
• The University of Western Australia
• The University of Queensland
• The University of Melbourne
• La Trobe University

Further Resources

SeRP was featured in the June 2023 meeting of the Australian Sensitive Data Interest Group, where the team discussed the aims of the project and what has been achieved so far. Some of the exemplar projects onboarded were highlighted to show the range of different projects and how they can benefit from using an SRE. Some of the challenges and the lessons learnt throughout the onboarding process were also discussed. Watch the recording: