Five minute profile: interview with Ryan Bremner

What’s your role at RDS and what does a typical workday involve? 

I work as an Information Governance (IG) Officer as part of Research Data Scotland’s Digital Team. While my main projects cover ADR Scotland, synthetic data and the Connect 4 federalisation work, I also help with our internal IG processes where I can. 

I can’t say I really have a typical day! I work across such a variety of projects that each day is a little different. But you could say that some of the constants are meetings and collaborating with both our partner organisations and our teams internally, writing IG documentation and feeding into project documentation. 

What’s your background and how does it give you additional insight to your work at RDS? 

As our only Aberdonian representative, I joined RDS after spending some time working in   Information Governance for a Local Authority and have previously worked for a charity as their Data Protection Officer. 

I think this experience of working directly with the public’s personal data has given me a real understanding of the expectations people have regarding appropriate measures to protect their privacy and the risks of noncompliance. I’ve learned a lot of lessons from those experiences, which I’ve been pleased to be able to bring into my work at RDS. 

Information Governance underpins so much of the work we do, and it is crucial that we have robust processes and documentation to ensure that people’s data is handled safely.  

What’s a highlight and a challenge of your role? 

The people are definitely a real highlight of this role. Everyone here is genuinely lovely, and feel there is real excitement about the work that we are doing. Although we have grown rapidly over the last few years, RDS is still a relatively small organisation, which means everyone knows each other by name. I really enjoy hearing about the wide range of interesting career backgrounds that we have across the organisation, and learning from my colleagues’ vast and varied experience where I can. 

Similarly, it’s been great to get to work with people across so many different organisations as part of our work, though juggling the processes of multiple organisations is one of the more challenging aspects of my role. Each of the organisations we work with has a different way in how they approach this type of work, as well as different tolerance levels to risk. This means that we must be flexible when working with them, especially when we are working with their data.  

What difference do you hope RDS will make? 

I hope — and believe — that RDS will streamline how data is accessed in Scotland. By making it simpler and faster for researchers to access data, we will see interesting and impactful research that will help to improve things for everyone.

What would be your "Mastermind" specialist subject? 

I am a massive fan of videos games and rubbish movies, so I’d feel very confident taking questions on those subjects.  

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received? 

Just about the importance of self-reflection and getting feedback, no matter the moment always look to improve.