Privacy Act memo

DATE: October 29, 2014

TO: Tony Dickherber

Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives

National Cancer Institute

FROM: NIH Privacy Act Officer

SUBJECT: Applicability of the Privacy Act: “Surveys and Interviews to Support an Evaluation of the Innovative Molecular Analysis Technologies (IMAT) Program (NCI)”

I have reviewed the NCI submission to OMB referenced above. The project involves an outcome evaluation of the IMAT program to gauge the impact of investments in technology development and also to assess the strengths and weaknesses of phased innovation award mechanisms. The focus of the evaluation will be on understanding the successes of supported technologies.

Interviews and web-based surveys will be conducted by a contractor with individuals in three respondent groups who have different associations with the technology in order to gather information about the current state of the technology and its potential for affecting progress in cancer research and treatment. Survey respondents are predominantly located at institutions across the United States with a small percentage of responders located at foreign institutions. They include primarily scientists, engineers, and clinicians and include IMAT awardees, a comparison group of NIH awardees, and technology end-users, possibly including patient advocacy communities.

A database will be developed to store the respondent names, ID numbers and contact information, as well as the dates of all email and telephone contracts. The database will link IDs to individual information and will be destroyed at the end of the project. All quantitative data will be compiled into Word documents and respondent personal data will be stored separately. All project files will be password-protected and access to the files will be limited to authorized project staff. Interview information will be stored on a secure server. Unless express permission is provided by the respondent, all data findings will be de-identified and reported in the aggregate.

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Since data and information will be stored and retrieved in a manner that can identify subjects directly or through identifiers linked to the subjects, I have determined that the Privacy Act will apply to this data collection.

This data collection is covered by NIH Privacy Act Systems of Record 09-25-0156, “Records of Participants in Programs and Respondents in Surveys Used to Evaluate Programs of the Public Health Service, HHS/PHS/NIH/OD.”

If you have questions, please contact me at (301) 402-6201.

Karen M. Plá

Enclosure

cc: Karla Bailey, NCI PRA Liaison (w/o enclosure)