Toward a 21st Century National Data Infrastructure: Mobilizing Information for the Common Good (2023) / Chapter Skim
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3 A Vision for a New National Data Infrastructure
3 A Vision for a New National Data Infrastructure
Pages 37-74
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From page 37... ...
These FSRDCs, importantly, facilitate collaborative agreements between more than a hundred universities, the entire Federal Reserve System, and four principal statistical agencies. However, no sta tistical organization has overall responsibility for coordinating data access and use among data holders, statistical agencies, and data users.
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From page 38... ...
In the panel's vision, explicit values will guide the operations of a new data infrastructure and decisions relating to its use. Primary among these values is respecting and protecting data subjects and data holders.
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From page 39... ...
In the panel's vision, a new data infrastructure must also support two way information flows: from data holders to statistical agencies and from statistical agencies to data holders. Statistical agencies must return useful information and services to data holders to inform the data holders' deci sions, operations, and activities.
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From page 40... ...
• Data holders are incentivized to share data for statistical purposes, by the provi sion of tangible benefits that inform and improve their operations and activities. • A reformed legal and regulatory framework undergirds protections for both participants and authorities, permitting increased use of existing data re sources for common-good statistical information.
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From page 41... ...
Second, the panel argues that a new data infrastructure must address underlying issues of autonomy -- the ability of data subjects to make their own decisions. As a new data infrastructure is developed, how will individuals and the community at large be involved with the creation of consent procedures relevant to blending multiple data sources to produce aggregate statistics?
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From page 42... ...
, reviews the various laws affecting the operations of the federal agencies. Existing laws for federal statistical agencies imply that protecting data can offer a data subject complete certainty of nondisclosure.
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From page 43... ...
Finally, sustainable methods have evolved for using data for research and solely statistical purposes, without violating confidentiality pledges given by federal statistical agencies (for example the FSRDC network) .2 A new data infrastructure can take advantages of these discoveries in mounting its privacy-protecting framework.
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From page 44... ...
Determinations of statistical purposes for federal statistical agencies have, generally, been relatively straightforward, but the Evidence Act has added a wrinkle relevant to a new national data infrastructure. The Evidence Act provides access to data assets "for purposes of developing evidence," where "evidence" is "information produced as a result of statistical activities conducted for a statistical purpose" (U.S.
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From page 45... ...
The panel notes that all of these are uses of statistical data appropriate for a new data infrastructure. Federal statistical agencies have legally sanctioned missions limited to statistical uses of data.
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From page 46... ...
Thus, the need to demonstrate the benefits of expanded data sharing to diverse data holders and important stakeholders becomes a prerequisite for the success of a new data infrastructure. State, tribal, territory, and local governments, along BOX 3-4 Data Holders Proposed to Share Data in a 21st Century National Data Infrastructure • Principal federal statistical agencies • Federal program and administrative agencies • State, tribal, territory, and local governments • Private sector enterprises • Data brokers • Nonprofit and academic institutions • Crowdsourced or citizen science SOURCE: Panel generated.
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From page 47... ...
However, in the panel's opinion, benefits should go beyond improved statistics to include reciprocal information sharing, in which tailored insights extracted from data assets and analysis flow back to data holders, informing their activities and operations. Direct Benefits to Data Holders of Sharing Data for National Statistical Purposes The panel reviewed a set of benefits that could sustainably be offered to data holders in return for access to their data for national statistical needs.
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From page 48... ...
Such a new era would begin with the promise that a new data infrastructure would be designed to benefit data subjects, data holders, data users, and society as a whole. Another way to incentivize data holders is to ensure that the societal benefits are proportionate to the possible costs and risks of sharing their data assets.
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From page 49... ...
, and permitted federal statistical agencies to share their own statistical data with each other. The act also expanded secure 4 IRS Title 26, 6103(j)
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However, there are many valuable government data assets whose use for statistical purposes is limited. For example, the Evidence Act's CIPSEA 2018 amendment (Evidence Act, Part B)
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(2022) provide three main findings regarding the autonomy of principle statistical agencies: 1.
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. Finally, the panel is not aware of any laws or regulations that pro hibit companies or individuals who are not sworn agents of statistical agencies from profiting from information that they provide to statistical agencies.
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From page 53... ...
Some frameworks define data governance as "the ability to manage the life cycle of data through the implementation of policies, processes and rules in accordance with the organisation's strategic objectives."10 For discussion purposes, the panel defines the data-governance framework as including the authorities; structures; roles and responsibilities; policies, rules, and directives; guiding principles; and resources needed to support a new data infrastructure. Key data infrastructure capabilities include acquiring, accessing, using, managing, and protecting data assets.
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From page 54... ...
Components of data governance guide decisions for acquiring, sharing, using, managing, safeguarding, and stewarding data. The governance framework shapes important data-governance components, as shown in Box 3-6.11 Many of these data-governance components require the active engagement of the diverse stakeholders (data subjects, data holders, and responsible organizations)
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From page 55... ...
governance framework will depend upon both the passage of necessary legal reforms and the organizational structures chosen to implement the governance procedures. However, certain key questions can be identified now.
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The Federal Data Ethics Framework tenet states: Accountability requires that anyone acquiring, managing, or using data be aware of stakeholders and be responsible to them, as appro priate. Remaining accountable includes the responsible handling of classified and controlled information, upholding data use agreements made with data providers [data holders]
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From page 57... ...
As Katherine Wallman, workshop participant, noted, data standards also can be an important gift to data holders and can incentivize them to share their data. Standards permit the coordination of actors on shared documentation, and, in return, government statistical agencies can use standardized data to report back to stakeholders, creating a virtuous cycle of standards and information useful to society.
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From page 58... ...
Attribute 6: Transparency to the Public Regarding Analytical Operations Using the Infrastructure In addition to the attributes described above, the panel believes that transparency is critical to building the trust essential to engendering widespread support for a new data infrastructure.14 A new data infrastructure, in the panel's view, must be viewed as legitimate by the participating data holders, data subjects, and society at large. A new infrastructure will include more sources of data from more data holders on more data subjects than did the data infrastructure of the 20th century.
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From page 59... ...
. The panel notes that the current United States legal and governance framework does not supply the level of transparency that these formal entities are promulgating.
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From page 60... ...
In the panel's judgment, the access and use of diverse data assets held by distinct data holders in various sectors will involve new partners who have divergent experiences with digital data. Data-seeking organizations will require expertise in working with data holders to understand the basic processes generating their data.
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From page 61... ...
As mentioned in Chapter 2, such pilot projects are now ongoing in federal statistical agencies, and the panel expects that important lessons will be learned. Like the Committee for National Statistics' report, F ederal Statistics, Multiple Data Sources, and Privacy Protection: Next Steps (the N ational Academies, 2017a)
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From page 62... ...
SUMMARY This chapter has described a vision for a 21st century national data infrastructure along with seven key attributes that are listed in Box 3-2. Achieving the vision of a new data infrastructure with these attributes will not be easy, but it can be done.
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From page 63... ...
. The defined conditions for disclosure of personal records without prior consent include use for statistical purposes by the Census Bureau, for statistical research or reporting when the records are to be transferred in a form that is not individually identifiable for routine uses within a U.S.
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at universities and other organizations and agencies registered with DHHS review research protocols to determine whether they qualify for exemption from or are subject to IRB review and, if the latter, whether the protocol satisfactorily adheres to the regulations. Some federal statistical agencies are required to submit data-collection protocols to an IRB for approval; other agencies maintain exemption from IRB review but follow the principles and spirit of the regulations.
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From page 65... ...
1997 Order Providing for the Confidentiality of Statistical Information OMB issued this order in 1997 to bolster the confidentiality protections afforded by statistical agencies or unit (as listed in the order) , some of which lacked legal authority to back up their confidentiality protection.24 CIPSEA (see next section)
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From page 66... ...
For all data furnished by individuals or organizations to an agency under a pledge of confidentiality for exclusively statistical purposes, Subtitle A provides that the data will be used only for statistical purposes and will not be disclosed in identifiable form to anyone not authorized by the title. It makes the knowing and willful disclosure of confidential statistical data a class E felony, with fines up to $250,000 and imprisonment for up to five years.
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From page 67... ...
may be designated to use individually identifiable information for analysis and other statistical purposes and be held legally responsible for protecting the confidentiality of that information. Under the Evidence Act, OMB is charged with promulgating guidance for implementation of a process to designate statistical agencies and units.25 A total of 16 agencies and units are currently so recognized (see Appendix B)
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From page 68... ...
, of the 2002 E-Government Act are the latest in a series of laws beginning with the Privacy Act of 1974, that govern access to individual records maintained by the federal government (see also Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015, below)
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From page 69... ...
It also provided a "Common Baseline for IT Management," which lays out FITARA responsibilities of CIOs and other agency officials, such as the chief financial officer and program o fficials. On May 4th, 2016, the federal CIO and the administrator of OIRA, both in OMB, jointly issued Supplemental Guidance on the Implementation of M-15-14 "Management and Oversight of Federal Information Technology" -- Applying FITARA Common Baseline to Statistical Agencies and Units (U.S.
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From page 70... ...
The technology, currently in version E3A, has been welcomed by federal statistical agencies, but agencies initially were concerned about a DHS interpretation of the act that would allow DHS staff to monitor traffic on agency networks and follow up on actual or likely intrusions. Such surveillance by DHS staff could lead to violations of agencies' pledges to protect the confidentiality of information provided by individual respondents for statistical purposes, which state that only statistical agency employees or sworn agents can see such information.
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From page 71... ...
The Census Bureau is not permitted to publicly release your responses in a way that could identify you. Per the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015, your data are protected from cybersecurity risksthrough screening of the systems that transmit your data.
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From page 72... ...
, and Common Statistical Data Architecture (CSDA; provides a data-centric view of a statistical institute's architecture, putting a focus on data, metadata, and data capabilities needed to treat data as an asset) .32 • The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI)
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From page 73... ...
as the lead entity in the fed eral government for the development, implementation, and review of policies, practices, and standards relating to geospatial data. The FGDC has years of working with federal statistical, program, and administrative agencies to devise data standards related to collec tion, sharing, use, dissemination, and mitigation of risk.37 36 See: https://x12.org/ 37 See: https://www.fgdc.gov/standards and also standards for metadata and interoperability: https://www.fgdc.gov/metadata; https://www.fgdc.gov/what-we-do/develop-geospatial-sharedservices/interoperability/gira
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