Policies and Procedures

NYCRDC OPERATIONS

All research is conducted in secure laboratories located at Baruch and Cornell that are operated in partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies (CES).

The NYCRDC is supported by 11 member institutions and support from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Consortium members are entitled to access for at least 2 projects at any one time.
Non-members may access the NYCRDC laboratories for a fee.

Facility Information | Funding and Fees | Approved Projects | Project Completion

FACILITY INFORMATION

The NYCRDC laboratories provide each project with workspaces, a place to secure research materials, and thin-client workstations to remotely access the Census Bureau data.

Available software includes:

SAS
Stata
Gauss
word processing and spreadsheet programs

Please consult with the RDC Administrator at each location if other software is necessary for your project.

Hours of operation:

During normal business hours, the NYCRDC Administrators employed by the RDC provide computing and research support.
Researchers with active projects may access the laboratories 24/7.

NYCRDC projects may take place at either location:

NYCRDC (Baruch) NYCRDC (Cornell)

Baruch School of Public Affairs CISER

135 E 22nd St Cornell University

Room 801 391 Pine Tree Rd

New York, NY 10010 Ithaca, NY 14850

Non-host institution NYCRDC researchers should contact the RDC Administrators for information on access to the buildings that house each RDC.

FUNDING AND FEES:

Cornell researchers should contact the NYCRDC Cornell RDC Administrator regarding fees.
NYCRDC Consortium members (except Cornell): if the institution still has some of its allotted time left, then the lab fees are covered by the institution's membership contribution. If NYCRDC Baruch has additional capacity, more than two projects per member may be permitted.
If the researcher is not associated with one of the Consortium member institutions, the researcher may access the NYCRDC by paying a fee; current fees are $20,000 for half-time access to a terminal for a year. Contact the NYCRDC Executive Director regarding fees for shorter-term NCHS and AHRQ projects.
Research grantees of the National Science Foundation are not required to pay access fees to use either NYCRDC facility. Researchers with NSF support should note this in the funding section of the preliminary proposal.
Additional fees may be charged to projects that use data sets outside the core or that impose other special costs on CES, the Census Bureau, or the RDC.

Contact the NYCRDC Administrators or Executive Director for more detailed information about costs, funding, and availability.

STEPS FOR APPROVED PROJECTS

Obtain Special Sworn Status .
Complete researcher agreements that describe terms and conditions under which the research must be conducted .
Provide any needed external data files to the RDC Administrator and CES computing staff .
Meet any Human Subjects review board criteria for their home institution.

DISCLOSURE AND CONFIDENTIALITY

All research conducted at the NYCRDC falls under Title 13 regulations. Federal law prohibits disclosure of information contained in data prepared by the Bureau of the Census. As a result, research at the NYCRDC takes place under conditions that are more restrictive than a typical research environment.

Output-printed or otherwise-may not be removed from the NYCRDC until it has been cleared for disclosure by the RDC Administrator and CES.
For certain projects, output may be subject to additional review by the Census Bureau's Disclosure Review Board.
Each researcher on the project who wishes to see undisclosed output at the NYCRDC must obtain Special Sworn Status (SSS).
No analysis can be performed outside of the NYCRDC laboratories.
Outside computing equipment, including laptops, cannot be brought into the lab by researchers.
Data may only be used for the approved project.

Significant limitations on what output may be released exist in order to maintain confidentiality standards:

projects must emphasize output from statistical models
intermediate output, including detailed tables of descriptive statistics and regression models based on small sample sizes typically cannot be removed from the RDC

Researchers should keep in mind that:

the clearance process for removing data from the RDC may take several weeks
coordination with the RDC Administrator on timelines for disclosure analysis in advance of presentations or circulation of papers is strongly recommended
co-researchers and graduate advisers may find it more efficient to obtain SSS and visit the RDC to examine preliminary output prior to its being cleared for disclosure

A complete description of the research environment at the RDCs and more details on disclosure and confidentiality are available on the CES web site.

PROJECT COMPLETION

Access to all files ends at midnight on the last day of the project.

All data and programs remain in the possession of the Census Bureau.
Researchers should provide documentation of all programs developed to conduct the research.

Extensions may be requested in some circumstances, but note that they are rarely granted in the case of projects using Federal Tax Information.

Reactivation of projects is permitted for one month at no charge to complete a reasonable set of revisions for publication, as long as a researcher's SSS is current.

Researchers are required to provide within 6 months of the end of a project:

a statement describing how the proposed benefits to the Census Bureau were realized
a CES working paper and copies of any papers or publications based on the research
a technical memo detailing the findings that pertain to the Census Bureau benefits

Disclaimers must be included on all researchers' publications resulting from use of data at the NYCRDC; contact the RDC Administrators for the specific language.

Acknowledgement of the NSF's support to the NYCRDC would be appreciated on all publications with such language as:

"Support for this research at the NYCRDC from the NSF (awards no.SES-0322902 and ITR-0427889) is gratefully acknowledged."