Managing and Disseminating Sensitive Data In Ssh: Lessons From Cessda National Service Providers

Social Science and Humanities (SSH) research increasingly relies on access to personal and sensitive data held under controlled access conditions. While such data are essential for meaningful analysis, reuse, and cross‑national research, they also pose significant legal, ethical, and operational challenges. Researchers and data services must balance their obligations under data protection regulations such as the GDPR with the growing expectation to share and reuse data. Despite the availability of technical safeguards, disclosure and re‑identification risks frequently stem from human factors, differences in national regulatory frameworks, and uneven levels of guidance, expertise, and training.

This panel addresses these challenges from a European perspective, drawing on work carried out within the CESSDA Working Group on Sensitive Data. This contribution will summarise common challenges faced by CESSDA Service Providers, highlight emerging good practices, and identify areas where further alignment and cooperation are needed.

National use cases will be presented to illustrate challenges and solutions: Germany: Experiences from Research Data Centres providing controlled access to sensitive data, focusing on researcher fallibility, diverse access models, and the ASSURED initiative, which offers modular training and accreditation to strengthen the “Safe People” dimension of the Five Safes framework. Switzerland: Practical approaches to anonymisation of quantitative and qualitative SSH data, addressing disclosure risk, the limits of anonymisation, and the trade-offs between data protection and data utility. Slovenia: Institutional and infrastructural solutions for sensitive data access in a smaller national context, highlighting alignment with CESSDA guidance and challenges in supporting researchers with limited resources.

Together, these perspectives underscore the need for continued European‑level coordination, capacity‑building, and harmonisation of practices to ensure that sensitive data can be accessed and reused safely, responsibly, and effectively across the SSH research community.