Data landscape review report 2024 to 2025
This report focuses specifically on data access and sharing challenges related to online harms and the online safety tech sector, including the technologies and initiatives used to address them.
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In January 2021, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) launched the Online Safety Data Initiative (OSDI) to explore how to improve access to high-quality data for online safety technologies. The initiative identified key barriers to data access and sharing, which were further examined in the 2022 Data Landscape Review. That review confirmed that online safety tech providers continue to face major data challenges. As part of this evolution, the sector has seen a shift in needs: the emphasis has moved from data quantity to data quality, with an increasing demand for high-quality, well-labelled, and representative datasets that reflect real-world scenarios.
Commissioned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), this report builds on those findings and examines how data access needs have evolved since January 2023. It assesses the current data challenges faced by online safety tech providers, reviews recent data sharing initiatives, and provides a broad context for these findings within the current policy and market landscape.