Common Contracts

DATA LICENSING AGREEMENTS AT U.S. GOVERNMENT AGENCIES AND RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS

February 20th, 2001

• Filed
  February 20th, 2001

Federal statistical agencies and research organizations often collect data under a promise that the data will be kept confidential. At the same time, the agencies and organizations wish to release as much of this information as possible for research, while upholding the confidentiality pledge. When the risk of disclosing confidential information associated with a research data file is considered too high to allow public release of the file, there are several restricted access methods that allow a limited number of researchers to use the data (Jabine, 1993). One of these, data licensing, involves the signing of a formal contract between the data providing organization and a research team. Licensing allows researchers access to data that have undergone minimal disclosure limitation procedures and are therefore most useful for detailed analyses. One drawback to licensing is the need to establish a structure for its implementation. This involves the drawing up of a legally binding contract