An update from government’s tech department sheds light on the £100m cost of the facility, as well as detailing a quintet of exploratory programmes testing the efficacy of new methods
The UK’s planned National Data Library has begun work on five “kickstarter projects” focused on areas including supporting citizens to pay energy bills and using artificial intelligence to provide legal advice to businesses.
The creation of the library was one of the biggest government tech proposals set out in the Labour manifesto ahead of the 2024 general election. The policy document put forward a vision for a national, state-run system intended to “bring together existing research programmes and help deliver data-driven public services, whilst maintaining strong safeguards and ensuring all of the public benefit”.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, has today released a progress update on the National Data Library (NDL) programme, which reveals that the establishment of the facility is supported by “over £100m” of government money.
Work on the programme to date has included the completion of “an extensive discovery phase”, during which DSIT has “built a strong national evidence base to shape the remit and delivery model” of the library.
Alongside research, government has also “launched five kickstarter projects that aim to deliver high-value use cases while testing innovative ways to address challenges related to data access”.
The first of these projects is concerned with the potential use of public sector data to better identify – and support – the approximately 10% of UK households that are currently struggling to pay energy bills.
“Information about household circumstances – earnings, benefits, energy usage – is held across different parts of the public sector,” the DSIT update says. “Bringing this information together could help build a clearer picture of which households are struggling and may be entitled to support. This project will explore whether securely connecting these different data sources could make it easier to identify households in need, to ensure support reaches the people it’s designed for faster.”
The second kickstarter initiative is focused on providing employment and career support for people with disabilities or long-term health conditions. The project will explore the possibilities of “bringing datasets and information [together] across services”, thus ensuring citizens do not need to provide the same information to multiple public-sector teams.
The update adds: “The lessons learned from this work could help reduce the administrative burden on individuals and help ensure that more people receive the support they’re entitled to – enabling them to take advantage of opportunities, participate in their communities, and contribute to economic growth.”
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The third workstream will examine data-led ways to “ensure adult social care services match demand”, according to DSIT.
“Useful data about social care services already exist, but those who need it most – care providers, local authorities and researchers – often struggle to access or make sense of it,” the update says. “This project will test whether bringing this data together in a more accessible way could help. The aim is to explore how a new digital service might gather, analyse and present information clearly, while protecting privacy.”
The penultimate kickstarter “will explore how streams of authoritative legal data from the National Archives could be made AI-ready… could open the door for AI systems to easily digest high quality information – and ultimately give small and medium sized businesses cost-effective legal support”.
The DSIT update claims that this work could help bring down the current costs to small UK business of “failing to address legal issues such as contract law and disputes”. Such issues currently hit SMEs to the tune of £13.6bn annually, according to government.
The final project will focus on the use of “trusted Met Office data, alongside AI tools and compute allocation” to help businesses and citizens better plan for incoming weather – particularly extreme conditions such as heatwaves or storms.
“Whether it’s a local café knowing working out if it should stock up on hot chocolate instead of ice cream, to creating or developing smarter ways to grit the roads that actually need it – this project will explore how better access to weather and climate data could help make streets safer and businesses more resilient,” the update adds.
In addition to these burgeoning programmes of work, the DSIT document runs through a variety of “government data access initiatives already delivering” results – including the National Underground Asset Register to monitor the condition of subterranean infrastructure, the Department for Education’s Content Store for training AI tools, and the justice system’s Better Outcomes through Linked Data public policy project.
The update closes with a one-sentence ‘Next steps’ section informing readers that “the government will set out more details on the National Data Library in spring 2026”.
Following Labour’s election triumph in July 2024, preparatory work on the manifesto-promised NDL began in April 2025 when the Government Digital Service led a trial exercise including the identification of 200 data sets held by Whitehall departments that were considered suitable to be opened up for wide-scale reuse. In November, the digital unit entered into a six-month agreement with London-based tech consultancy esynergy to support the “architecture design” of the new data facility.
Government’s recently published Digital Roadmap for the coming years offered a brief update, indicating that the library’s “delivery [will be] informed by diverse user needs and expert advice, [and] early projects will showcase new ways of using public sector data to positively impact people’s lives”.
