blog: Government response to petition regarding the future of the AHDS

As most of you will be aware, the AHRC in June 2007 announced to withdraw its funding from the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS). This led to several reactions from the community, among them a petition to the Prime Minister to reconsider that decision. Over 1.000 signatures were received.

On the January 4th, the government responded to the petition:

Government policy is that decisions on such services are a matter for the Research Council concerned.
The Government expects that such decisions would only be taken after a careful review of the service in question. We are aware that the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) only took the decision to cease funding the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) after detailed consideration. The Council concluded at its March 2007 meeting that having regard both to the performance and cost of AHDS, this was not something they should continue to fund. There are no grounds for the Government seeking to ask the Council to reconsider that decision.