The Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN) has been awarded funding through the Digital Research Alliance of Canada’s (the Alliance) National Data Spaces (NDS) Pilot Funding Program to develop a national data space for researchers who work with sensitive data from the social sciences.
The NDS Pilot Program seeks to establish domain-specific data spaces to advance Canada’s research data ecosystem by fostering trusted, sustainable, and domain-driven approaches to data stewardship and collaboration. This new initiative is working with three successful proposals to pilot disciplinary-led approaches to research data. CRDCN’s success represents a significant boost for the social sciences and reinforces the Network’s role as Canada’s largest national research infrastructure serving social science researchers.
The NDS pilot addresses the growing concern regarding the fragmentation of research data and the lack of coordinated mechanisms to build disciplinary capacity. Canada has an urgent need for a coordinated national framework to govern and steward research data, which was echoed in the Office of the Chief Science Advisor’s July 2025 report Towards a National Scientific Data Governance Framework. CRDCN’s Executive Director Natalie Harrower served as an advisory committee member for the report.
By piloting National Data Spaces, the Alliance is aligning with international best practices being developed by the European Union and Australia to organize and support the digital research infrastructure, data and software requirements of research communities. This approach also resonates with the findings from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)’s data working group that data management is central to the functioning of all national research infrastructures, as addressed during the annual Major Science Initiatives workshop in 2025.
“National Data Spaces are a cornerstone of the Canadian Research Data Platform, that will bring domain and disciplinary perspectives to form a connected and resilient national research data ecosystem,” says the Alliance in their announcement.
About the Sensitive Social Science National Data Space
With this grant, CRDCN will, over the next 26 months, convene communities of disciplinary researchers and data specialists and conduct the requirements elicitation and requirements engineering to design a repository and trusted research environment for sensitive social sciences data. This work will draw from and expand beyond the existing 2,500+ researchers from all provinces who rely on CRDCN as a national research infrastructure, and outline the research data lifecycle needs from deposit and curation, through discovery and managed access, to archiving and indexing.
This new undertaking builds on CRDCN’s 26-year partnership with Statistics Canada, which has seen the Network facilitate access, training and knowledege mobilization for academic researchers working with Statistics Canada’s massive, rich and diverse collection of microdata. The scoping for new repository–for sensitive social sciences data outside the scope of those provided by Statistics Canada–will outline a stewardship framework that seeks to complement, expand and consolidate what researchers are able to currently access through the Network. The Québec Inter-university Centre for Social Statistics (QICSS) is a key partner who will help to convene researchers in Québec, and deepen the bilingual framing of the national data space. As a clear use case, the project will focus on pilot data about education; this domain has been chosen to help test the requirements of working with provincial and municipal data, and also because education research attracts a range of disciplinary questions and methodologies. The Education Data Advisory Group is composed of leading scholars in education from four provinces and a range of disciplines: Elizabeth Dhuey (Economics, University of Toronto), Veronique Dupéré (Psychoéducation, Université de Montréal), Ted McDonald (Political Science, University of New Brunswick) and Simon Woodcock (Economics, Simon Fraser University).
A central focus of this initiative is community building: bringing together researchers, data stewards, and institutional partners from across Canada to define a shared vision for a national social science data space. Ultimately, this project represents a critical first step toward establishing a national social science data space for Canada.
“We are honoured to have been chosen to pilot one of Canada’s first national data spaces, and pleased with the opportunity to highlight the value of social science research to Canadian society, economy and policymaking. The investigations that social science researchers make using statistical and administrative data address questions that affect the daily lives of individuals, families and businesses in Canada, and are fundamental to designing the programs and policies that seek to improve these lives. The process of convening a national data space – of learning from researchers and building infrastructure that helps advance their studies – is an excellent opportunity to strengthen research in Canada. We are fortunate to have an existing community of over 2,500 researchers to help us start this journey, and inform how we can provide a space for secure data deposit and access, ensure the long term sustainability of key datasets, and ultimately help researchers to answer complex questions,” says CRDCN Executive Director Natalie Harrower.
“As the longstanding host of CRDCN, McMaster supports this important step in strengthening Canada’s social science research infrastructure. Data-driven decision-making and ethical data management are central to our research strategy, and we welcome CRDCN’s growing leadership in this area,” says McMaster Vice-President, Research Gianni Parise.
CRDCN will host a webinar on April 14, 2026 to share more information about the project and opportunities for community engagement. Register now: https://crdcn.ca/events/introducing-the-national-data-space-for-sensitive-data-in-social-sciences/
About CRDCN
The Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN) is one of Canada’s Major Science Initiatives, headquartered at McMaster University. It is a premier research and training platform for over 2,500 researchers in the quantitative social and health sciences in Canada. The Network provides unique access to Statistics Canada data on 30+ campuses across the country to advance knowledge and inform public policy.
About McMaster University
McMaster University is Canada’s most research-intensive university and is consistently ranked as one of the world’s Top 100 universities. Together, our researchers, students and staff advance human and societal health and well-being, creating a Brighter World.
About the Digital Research Alliance of Canada
The Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance) plays a central role in helping to advance the establishment of a researcher focused, accountable, agile, strategic and sustainable digital research infrastructure (DRI) ecosystem for researchers in Canada. The Alliance’s members include over 100 of Canada’s top universities, colleges, research hospitals and institutes, and other leading organizations in DRI.
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