The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Advanced Technology Program (ATP/NIST) provided funding to establish a data enclave at NORC.  The enclave is a tool that allows the sharing, among a closed community of researchers, datasets that are too sensitive to share broadly.  NORC's activities include:

• Archiving, curating, and indexing the data,
• Providing researchers remote and onsite secure access to ATP data, and
• Statistically protecting confidential information

In addition, NORC manages an active outreach program to inform the national research community of the data and to foster the use of the data in research leading to conference presentations and journal publications.  NORC also has established an extensive education program to ensure appropriate use and disclosure of the data, including its confidentiality. 

The Data Enclave leverages some of the most modern technologies, most notably the Microdata Management Toolkit, which facilitates detailed documentation of surveys and related metadata. The toolkit conforms to the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and Dublin Core Metadata Initiative specifications for metadata documentation and uses XML technology which, among other utilities, limits the risk of data becoming obsolete as standards and file formats evolve. 

The US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, will provide additional support for ongoing work to improve the efficiency and effectiveness with which USDA’s sensitive micro data are managed and accessed.  In particular, the new funding will:

• increase capacity to accommodate up to 20 research participants gaining access to sensitive micro data in a secure collaborative environment;
  
• experiment with financial incentives to increase participation in the researcher collaboratory; and
  
• create scholarships through a research development funding program to promote projects that contribute to USDA’s public sector mission, contributing to a further understanding of the agriculture sector and providing information on the diversity of agriculture and the economic and environmental effects.