Delaware’s Integrated Data System
CDDA integrates state and community administrative data, allowing policymakers and practitioners to have a more complete understanding of strengths and needs across Delaware’s programs. This allows us to conduct more comprehensive analyses that transform data into actionable intelligence for our program directors and policymakers.
Prioritizing Cycles of Inquiry
Identify Research Priorities
CDDA’s governance approach is centered around fostering partnerships between researchers and decision-makers and collaboratively identifying research priorities.
Engage & Act
Decision-makers are engaged in the development of questions and interpretation of findings, facilitating the translation of data into decision-making.
Protect Confidential Data
Our data governance processes and platform consists of administrative, technical, and physical safeguards that ensure the protection of private information, deidentifying files, and limit access by implementing strict role-based protocols.
Governing the Integrated Data System
The CDDA’s data governance process involves the following aspects:
- Data Upload: The CDDA receives data from various state agencies and partners through a secure platform that ensures compliance with FERPA, HIPAA, the Privacy Act, and other applicable laws and regulations. Data provided from the agencies will be permanently removed from CDDA’s database after the time outlined in the Data Sharing Agreement, unless otherwise specified by the agreement (data could be kept longer if needed for the longitudinal studies)
- Data Preparation: The CDDA profiles and prepares the data for the approved research studies. The CDDA Data Scientist securely accesses and processes the data stored in the compliant cloud infrastructure. The data is de-identified unless otherwise specified by the study design.
- Data Analytics: The CDDA shares the study-specific datasets only with authorized and approved researchers within the secure cloud environment. The researchers access the data using University credentials and multi-factor authentication. The researchers must request and obtain approval from the IRB, the CDDA Director, and the Authorizing Agency to include additional researchers on the study.
CDDA’s security management plan: The CDDA has a detailed security management plan that covers aspects such as privacy, researcher privacy and security education oversight, risk assessment and risk management, access management, audits and logs, backup plan, security incident procedures, data retention and destruction, enforcement, and data governance. The CDDA works closely with University of Delaware IT-Security and other teams to ensure the compliance and effectiveness of the plan. You may retrieve the plan here.