nd security perspective. Social Finance Limited +44 (0) 20 7770 6836 87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ socialfinance.org.uk 84  Network Drives – Staff working with the source data export the latest data to a file (usually a CSV file, sometimes a MS Access database file), and upload it to the drive from which the TFD periodically pulls new data. This requires regular (generally weekly) input from members of staff, which takes time, and manually putting the datasets together sometimes leads to mistakes which prevent the data being loaded. Matching In order to connect data concerning the same individual across different data sources, a fuzzy matching script is used. This is a piece of code which allows records to be matched to one another despite slight discrepancies, such as typos when inputting dates of birth, or differing spellings of names. This is implemented as a script written in R. The matching process is reported to be successful with 96% of records. The system flags where a match may be incorrect, and this information is highlighted in the frontend so practitioners can be aware and interrogate this. If a match can’t be made with confidence, the data is shown as two separate individuals. The system doesn’t attempt to fix issues in the data but surface them to practitioners who can then attempt to have them resolved at the source. This is important as it prevents data quality issues being hidden from users and leading to reduced trust in the system, and it reduces the risk that decisions are made on inaccurate data, while also reducing the burden of running the database. After the matching process, the prepared data is added to the Warehouse, which is the ‘live’ part of the database, where it can be accessed by TFD users. Analysis is performed on this data. Adding