Selective Financial Assistance analysis reports
Date published:
The Independent Review of Economic Policy (IREP) recommended that “the Invest NI data collection system needs to be developed as a single database, to be maintained by DETI”. It also recommended that “DETI, as the funding department, should report on the strategic performance of Invest NI.”
As a result, an exploratory project linking Invest NI administrative data with NISRA business survey data was carried out by DETI Analytical Services Unit (ASU). This was focused on recipients of Selective Financial Assistance (SFA), the largest Invest NI programme used to assist employment and investment projects in Northern Ireland. The summary report is available below:
Professor Mark Hart of Aston Business School was subsequently commissioned to provide an independent assessment of the report produced, along with some further analyses. This report can be found below:
The SFA linkage report published in December 2012 was originally intended to cover the Invest NI 2008 – 2011 corporate period. However, business survey data for 2010/11 had not been available in time for inclusion in the original research and published report. With the subsequent availability of 2010/11 business survey data, the June 2013 update report includes that data to complete the data linkage exercise and can be found below.