IRIS Investigators contribute to the September 2015 Nature article “Researchers wrestle with a privacy problem.”

Julia Lane and Ron Jarmin of IRIS add to discussion of privacy in recent Nature article

IRIS researcher and New York University economist, Julia Lane, discusses “the challenges and the enormous potential power of ‘administrative data’ — information collected during routine provision of services.”  Lane explains that “although preserving privacy sometimes complicates researchers’ lives, it is necessary to uphold the public trust that makes the work possible.  Difficulty in access is a feature, not a bug.  It should be hard to get access to data, but it’s very important that such access be made possible.”  US Census Bureau’s assistant director for research and methodology and IRIS Investigator, Ron Jarmin, notes the importance of Research Data Centers which permit safe access to confidential data for research.

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