Establishing Remote Access to Confidential German Micro Labor Market Data

• Activity Number: 429
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 6, 2013 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Business and Economic Statistics Section
• Author(s): Joerg Heining*+ and Stefan Bender
• Companies: Institute for Employment Research (IAB) and IAB (Institute for Employment Research)
• Keywords: Confidential Micro Data ; Remote Data Access ; International Data Sharing

Abstract

By implementing the Research Data Center - in Research Data Center (RDC-in-RDC) approach, the Research Data Center (FDZ) of the German Federal Employment Agency in Nuremberg, Germany established for the first time remote access to confidential micro data in Germany. Legal concerns have prevented the implementation of remote access system in Germany so far. The RDC-in-RDC approach overcomes these concerns and may be regarded as a first step towards remote access in Germany. The idea is to allow remote access from designated institutions with comparable standards but locations other than Nuremberg. Thin client computers allow establishing a secure connection to a server where the data are stored and processed. In a first step, remote access to FDZ data was established at four sites in Germany and one site in the US. In 2013, this remote access network will be expanded to more sites in Europe and the US. The RDC-in-RDC approach represents a change of paradigms in two respects. First, data access will be decentralized and data access is disseminated instead of data. Second, the dissemination of micro data is no longer restricted to national borders.