s, because we know that the usefulness of any standard is directly proportional to its universality; if not all LAs can produce data to the standard, this severely limits its usefulness to adjacent workstreams and future initiatives. At the close of the initial, we recommended a twofold approach to meeting these requirements in the short term, both of which we have now agreed with DfE. First, we recommended using D2I to continue to support roll-out and maintenance of the SSD specification and production methods through the next financial year. 24 Second, we recommended a new funding agreement with DfE, to be paid in the next financial year, to complete development of extract methods for the three small-market-share CMS products. Further to these initial recommendations, we also recommend that DfE incorporate in its CSC data strategy a provision for long term sector support of initiatives like this, including the SSD and other sector-led data work. This support should be adaptable to the sector data landscape as it changes, ensuring the SSD a place in the sector’s digital and data landscape beyond the current support roadmap, which ends in March 2025. As detailed above, we are delighted to have been part of bringing this project to fruition, and we believe the project has delivered a product far surpassing initial expectations, and at a lower cost than originally anticipated. We look forward to seeing further work in this area from colleagues across the sector to make best use of the new capabilities of the SSD. 11. Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the generous and insightful contributions of a great number of colleagues across the sector, or without the dedicated support of our steering group members and partners. We are particularly gr