The NSF-Census Research Network: Cornell Node

Abstract

Cornell University has received a $3M NSF-Census Research Network (NCRN) award to improve the documentation and discoverability of both public and restricted data from the federal statistical system. The current internal name for this project is the Comprehensive Extensible Data Documentation and Access Repository (CED²AR). The diagram to the right provides a high level architectural overview of the system to be implemented. The CED²AR will be based upon leading metadata standards such as the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX) and be flexibly designed to ingest documentation from a variety of source files. It will permit synchronization between the public and confidential instances of the repository. The scholarly community will be able to use the CED²AR as it would a conventional metadata repository, deprived only of the values of certain confidential information, but not their metadata. The authorized user, working on the secure Census Bureau network, could use the CED²AR with full information in authorized domains.