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“Virtually all human activity in the modern world creates digital traces. It is our responsibility to ensure that the resulting data is protected and managed responsibly,” said Margaret Levenstein, director of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the U-M Institute for Social Research.
Levenstein is leading a project team working to create a “System of Digital Identities of Access” that provides dataset access to only people who possess a Researcher Passport. The Researcher Passport will address the vetting processes put in place by the U.S. Census Bureau, ICPSR, and others, verifying the credentials of the researcher. A data access visa would then be provided, which is a system that will enable data custodians to grant access to restricted data. A pilot of this system is scheduled to debut fall of 2018.
