ARA ANALYTICS — DATA MANAGEMENT PLANNING CHECKLIST
General planning aid. Confirm project-specific legal and institutional requirements.

BEFORE COLLECTION
[ ] State the purpose and research question.
[ ] Identify the data controller, processors and responsible project lead.
[ ] Confirm applicable registration and ethics requirements.
[ ] Determine the appropriate lawful basis and participant information.
[ ] Remove unnecessary personal fields.
[ ] Confirm data licences, permissions and any reuse limits.
[ ] Consider risks to participants and whether an impact assessment is needed.
[ ] Pilot instruments and translated participant materials.

ACCESS AND SECURITY
[ ] Record who can access each dataset and why.
[ ] Agree secure transfer, storage, backups and recovery.
[ ] Separate direct identifiers from analysis data where possible.
[ ] Agree third-party and AI-tool restrictions.
[ ] Document an incident and breach-response process.

ANALYSIS AND HANDOVER
[ ] Maintain a codebook, version history and provenance record.
[ ] Validate cleaning, calculations and transformations.
[ ] Review the risk of re-identification in outputs.
[ ] Record limitations and missing data.
[ ] Agree ownership and access to deliverables.

RETENTION AND CLOSEOUT
[ ] Agree a retention schedule and deletion responsibilities.
[ ] Define how access, correction or withdrawal requests are handled.
[ ] Review accounts and revoke access when no longer needed.
[ ] Document the handover and any agreed archival requirements.

Official Ghana guidance: https://dpc.gov.gh/compliance/
Ara contact: info.araanalytics@gmail.com