Trusted Research Environments (TREs) have become a cornerstone of how sensitive data is used for research in the UK and beyond. But as the landscape evolves, with more organisations, more data, and more complex research questions, the standards that underpin them need to evolve too. That’s exactly what SATRE 2.0 sets out to do.
What is SATRE, and why does it matter?
The Standard Architecture for Trusted Research Environments (SATRE) provides a common architecture and specification that TRE operators can use to design, build, and evaluate their environments. It’s not a product or a piece of software. It’s a shared language and a set of guardrails that help ensure TREs are safe, consistent, and trustworthy, wherever they are deployed.
Version 1.0 established that foundation. SATRE 2.0 builds on it significantly.
What’s new in SATRE 2.0?
The headline addition is a fifth pillar: Federation. Where previous versions of SATRE focused on what happens inside a single TRE, SATRE 2.0 tackles the thornier question of what happens when TREs need to work together. Providing researchers with access to data across organisational boundaries while maintaining the same rigorous standards of safety and control.
Federation isn’t a nice-to-have. As research questions grow more ambitious, spanning multiple datasets, multiple institutions, and increasingly multiple countries, the ability for TREs to interoperate is becoming essential. SATRE 2.0 gives the community a structured way to think about and implement that capability.
The rest of the specification has also been reviewed and refined throughout, with updated statements and guidance across existing pillars to keep pace with how TREs are being built and operated in practice.
Who should be using SATRE 2.0?
If you operate a TRE, build one, commission one, or evaluate one, SATRE 2.0 is for you.
That includes NHS data custodians, university research computing teams, government analytical teams and commercial data service providers. It’s also directly relevant to funders and policymakers who want assurance that the infrastructure they’re investing in meets a recognised specification.
Crucially, SATRE is a community-developed architecture. Using it means joining a conversation about what good looks like, and helping to shape what comes next.
Behind the scenes: what surprised us
Developing SATRE 2.0 has been a genuinely collaborative effort across the community, and the process has been as important as the end result.
The Federation pillar was shaped through community workshops at the UK TRE Conference in Leeds and at the TREvolution all-hands event, with participants from across the TRE ecosystem authoring hundreds of suggestions. The collaboration café events that followed gave the wider community an ongoing space to review, challenge and refine the emerging specification. Public involvement and engagement was also embedded in the project, ensuring that the perspectives of the public, not just technical practitioners, informed the direction of the work.
What struck me was how much agreement there already was. I expected a room full of organisations with different architectures, data types and risk appetites might disagree on the fundamentals of federation. Instead, we found a striking degree of shared intuition about what matters, and where the hard problems lie. The specification reflects that consensus, which gives me real confidence in its value to the community.
What’s next?
SATRE 2.0 is a milestone, but the work doesn’t stop here. Our priorities for the coming months include:
- Improving assessment tooling so organisations can evaluate themselves against the specification more easily and with better guidance
- Deepening engagement with international partners, including the publication of a Spanish version of the specification
- Continuing to evolve the specification in response to community feedback
The specification is open and community-owned. If you spot gaps, have questions, or want to get involved, we want to hear from you.
Get involved
The SATRE 2.0 specification is available now at satre-specification.readthedocs.io. The architecture can be found at https://satre-archimate.readthedocs.io. Evaluations and more can be found at https://satre.uktre.org/. If you’re a TRE operator or researcher and want to explore how SATRE applies to your context, or if you’d like to contribute to the next iteration, contact us or raise an issue directly on GitHub.
