tion of existing data into new structures. At the time of writing this work is incomplete. The kinship care project became an investigation into the scale of kinship care nationally, rather than a data development project. 16 In each case, our mitigation against later developments in these projects is in the extensible, flexible nature of the specification we have produced, and the automated pipeline for producing specification documents in light of structural changes. Our approach to shared data extract code will also minimise the work of extracting new data items from local CMS products – but will not eliminate it. In order to align these projects, new data requirements of LAs (or of CMS products) should consider the SSD during their development, and future support for the SSD should include provision for adapting to new data needs. 7.2. The DDSF 2a projects The “2a” projects, led respectively by a partnership of Social Finance and Leeds City Council, and by a partnership of Essex, Camden, Croydon, and Sutton Councils, performed detailed research into social workers’ experiences of using CMS products. The projects identified the value of different data items recorded by social workers, and the reasons for which different data were collected. Each project arrived at full reports to DfE including a set of recommendations for further work in this space. Should DfE look to revise statutory collections in light of these reports, the SSD should adapt in light of these changes, and the SSD should also be considered as a possible venue for data sharing between LAs and DfE. 7.3. The RIIA Quarterly Dataset LAs collaborate on a quarterly aggregate data collection called the RIIA Quarterly Dataset, to provide in-year benchmarking and early trend analysis across a suite of high-le