Through three years, 16 federal agencies, more than 1,300 datasets and a cascade of privacy laws and interagency agreements underpinned by decades-old entrenched processes, a team of federal employees launched the Standard Application Process in December, creating for the first time a single portal for U.S. researchers to request access to the mountains of confidential statistical data generated by the federal government.
The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018—better known as the Evidence Act—requires federal agencies to generate, use and share more data to improve all aspects of society. That includes sensitive and confidential data that could be useful for researchers in and out of government but must be treated with utmost care and only shared with responsible parties…
“Before the SAP, every agency had their own way—their own application, their own process for people to apply for data. So, if you wanted data from five different agencies, you had to go to five different websites—five different applications, five different processes—[to] try to figure it all out. It was quite cumbersome and quite difficult trying to navigate all that,” [Heather Madray, program director for the Data Access, Confidentiality and Quality Assessment project based out of the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics] told Nextgov.
“What this does is bring all the principle statistical agencies and units—so, 16 right now—together under one common application and one standard process,” she said. Read the full article here.