PROVISION OF SERVICES FOR: SYNTHETIC DATA: THE CURRENT USE, DEVELOPMENT AND LIMITS OF SIMULATED DATA IN DATA ANALYSIS

The Royal Society's Data Programme is developing policy and promoting debate that helps the UK safely and rapidly realise the growing benefits of data and digital technologies. In 2019, the Royal Society launched the report Protecting privacy in practice: The current use, development and limits of Privacy Enhancing Technologies in data analysis. One of our activities following from this report is an exploration of the status and role of Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs): technologies or conceptual approaches that allow the derivation of useful insights from data without requiring full data access. Some examples include homomorphic encryption, zero knowledge proofs, differential privacy, and secure multi-party computation. The Royal society seeks to engage a supplier to draft an explainer document reviewing the state of play, and possibilities for, synthetic data as a technology. This document shall include its development, potential uses and limitations, and current and emerging applications across various sectors. The review shall be accessible to a non-specialist audience, in the style of a briefing document See Attachment 1 - The Brief for more details. The Society has now launched a refresher project to update the 2019 report, which shall be published in Q1 2022. This report seeks to include an updated review of PETs applications, legal and regulatory issues relating to their use, and an illustrative set of use cases. This RFQ is to engage a supplier for the development of a commissioned review and shall be a foundational piece of our evidence gathering for this project; it will inform our understanding of the regulatory landscape, and possible futures with regard to PETs.