DARE UK has published the latest version of the Federated Architecture Blueprint following a consultation and series of reviews of the initial draft published in April 2023.
The updated blueprint sets out a comprehensive approach to securely connecting the UK’s Trusted Research Environments (TREs) and supporting services, paving the way for broader, safer, and more efficient sensitive data research in the UK. It defines a trustworthy and standardised method for either securely moving data between TREs or sending analytical workloads from one TRE to another. As sensitive data becomes increasingly available for research purposes, with projects seeking to link datasets from multiple sources, adopting a federated model (see definition in our FAQs) for research is becoming essential.
Organisations and researchers across the TRE ecosystem are beginning to explore federation, underscoring the importance of the blueprint to provide a timely and foundational architecture to guide their efforts. This latest version (Version 2.2) incorporates feedback from across the data research community and insights gained from DARE UK’s Phase 1 Driver Projects: SACRO, SARA, SATRE, TELEPORT, and TRE-FX. These projects played a critical role in identifying the capabilities TREs will need in a federated system and the organisational structures required to support this vision.
The initial draft of the Federated Architecture Blueprint has already gained attention and use internationally, including as a key input to the EOSC-ENTRUST project in Europe. This underlines its potential to inform federated research infrastructure developments beyond the UK. While the blueprint has reached an important milestone with the release of version 2.2, it remains a work in progress. DARE UK aims to use this version as the foundation for a collaborative working group that will further evolve the architecture in response to new challenges and developments during Phase 2 of the programme. A more advanced version 3.0 is anticipated in 2025.
The full blueprint document is now available in the DARE UK Zenodo Community, and we welcome comments on the document. You can share your feedback via our contact form or email us directly at enquiries@dareuk.org.uk. For those seeking a more accessible overview, we plan to release a set of summary documents and interactive resources in the coming year.
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