Nick Hart is the director of the Evidence Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, where he leads efforts to support implementation of the recommendations from the US Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking.

In December 2018, Congress paved the way for improved accessibility and protection for the data government collects. Through the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, Congress endorsed a suite of major bipartisan data reforms that will likely shape statistical policy for decades. The president enacted the provisions into law in January 2019.

The law takes steps to implement half of the unanimous recommendations of the 15-member US Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking, which issued its final report in 2017.

The commission—which included former heads of statistical agencies, researchers, and program administrators—concluded that the federal government could take meaningful steps to strengthen privacy protections while also improving secure access to confidential data for statistical activities. Thirty-six former heads of federal statistical agencies endorsed the commission’s recommendations, joining more than 100 organizations that issued similar endorsements.

Enactment of the legislation is a promising indicator about interest in reinforcing the key federal legal protections that exist for confidential data. By reauthorizing the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA) as part of the legislative package, Congress emphasized the importance of the critical CIPSEA protections for the American public and facilitating public trust in government’s statistical activities.

For the statistical community, the CIPSEA reauthorization also included new opportunities to facilitate secure access to data, expanding existing CIPSEA authorities. The law directs agencies to presume administrative data collected by government are available for statistical activities, unless expressly prohibited by law, and creates a common portal for researchers to apply for access to restricted data sets. These expanded authorities are coupled with increased responsibilities for statistical agencies to assess the risk individuals can be reidentified when statistical or information products are publicly released.

The law also includes provisions to improve coordination of key data management activities in federal agencies. When implementing the legislation in coming months and years, agencies will be encouraged to recognize the expertise of statistical agencies and establish new chief data and evaluation officers to provide senior leadership for responsible data use. Agencies will also be expected to make more data publicly available when possible, providing accessible data inventories and improved metadata.

While the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act does not establish the commission’s headline recommendation for a National Secure Data Service to facilitate activities related to temporarily combining data from across government agencies, the law does create an advisory committee to support and plan for efforts to establish such a data service. The committee is designed to be representative of a cross-section of data users for identifying potential implementation steps and privacy safeguards as discussion of the data service progresses.

In enacting this important law, Congress and the president set the stage for major reforms across government agencies in using and protecting sensitive data. Doing so will have tremendous benefits for the American public and policymakers’ ability to understand and evaluate government programs and policies. Coupled with ongoing efforts to develop a long-term federal data strategy, the federal government is moving toward recognizing and using data as an increasingly valuable asset.