COVID-19's impact on IRiSS's Federal Statistical Research Data Center expansion

March 30, 2020

The Santa Clara County shelter-in-place order was instituted just as IRiSS was in the process of finalizing security measures to certify the expanded Federal Statistical Research Data Center (RDC) for opening. The original facility on Alta Road has been serving 50 researchers, which need to alternate work times with just five workstations available. The new facility, located in the Lathrop Library building, will provide room for 26 workstations, and chairs for almost 40 researchers at any given time.

The vision for RDCs nationwide (29 in total) is to provide research access to microdata from all federal departments and agencies — eventually. A list of agencies providing microdata at this date through the RDC system is provided below. Examples of pioneering work that has been made possible with RDC access includes includes studies by Nick Bloom, David Grusky and Raj Chetty.

To learn more about the RDC, visit the IRiSS RDC website

While all RDCs across the nation are closed at present, IRiSS is still working to expand RDC access. In particular, IRiSS will provide training to demographers, health economists, public health scholars, and scholars in medicine who intend to conduct COVID-19 related studies. An online training session with Dr. Victoria Udalova from the Center for Economic Studies at the Census Bureau will be held on April 14. To see what type of topics she will cover, view her slides from a talk co-sponsored by IRiSS and SIEPR this past Winter Quarter.

• Census Bureau data: demographic and economic

• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)

• National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)

• Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

• Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)

• Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)

• Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS)

• Energy Information Administration (EIA)

• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

• National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NSF-NCSES)

• Social Security Administration (SSA)

• USDA Economic Research Service (ERS)

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)