As free and open source software, Splink is available for anyone to use. The MoJ data linking team encourages other government departments to try it out and give feedback to the authors, raise bug reports, or contribute improvements. The team have found that open sourcing the software has enabled much more effective collaboration across government departments and beyond. For example:
the ONS generously offered to peer review the work. To do so, they were able simply to download the code from GitHub and use the open source demo notebooks to understand how to use the software. They were therefore able to use the software without additional guidance from the MoJ. They contributed significant insights, including finding an important bug which has subsequently been fixed
it has enabled more effective collaboration with the academic advisors to the Data First project, who have been providing expert advice on data linking theory and practice. Academics are always able to see and use the latest version of the software, with none of the usual frictions and frustrations associated with sharing closed-source, and potentially sensitive code
it also has great benefits for the transparency of the Data First work, enabling users of MoJ linked data to understand exactly how the data linking was done. This enables analysts and researchers to properly account for the linking methodology in any subsequent uses of the linked data
it has greatly improved the authors’ ability to communicate their methodology to the wider data linking community, since other government departments can freely download and try out the code.