KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The University of Tennessee has been federally approved to handle restricted data on-campus, in an on-campus research data center.
The center will give local researchers and graduate students access to data from various federal and state agencies. The center will also enable researchers to collaborate with others across the nation in a secure environment.
Researchers would have had to travel to Atlanta to use a research center there in order to obtain data, since it was the closest center. To protect census respondent confidentiality, centers must meet strict physical and information security requirements.
Researchers also must undergo training to receive a Special Sworn Status from the Census Bureau, saying they can be trusted with the information. The centers also need to have the computing capacity and specialized software to handle large data sets and complex calculations.
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UT's research center will be a branch of Atlanta’s Federal Statistical Research Data Center — a partnership between the Census Bureau and a group of ten other institutions across the southeast, including UT.
The proposal to create a research center was submitted in 2019, and officials heard back in May 2020 that the proposal was approved. Officials called the research center "critical infrastructure" for future research in the social and behavioral sciences.
Many details still need to be worked out, officials said. They still need an exact location on campus, for example. They also said they hope to have a facility open on campus by mid-2022.