Labor Constructing a Virtual Data Enclave For Sensitive Microdata

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, an office within the U.S. Department of Labor that oversees the metrics characterizing the U.S. employment market, is developing a repository to share microdata with select university researchers on fatal injuries that took place among employees on the job.

To share data securely, the agency is looking to upgrade the infrastructure to host such data, writing in a contract solicitation that it currently does not have the technology to do so. 

“To ensure Bureau of Labor Statistics data is easily and securely accessible to American researchers, the BLS is pursuing the use of a virtual data enclave for all available datasets,” the department said in a statement to Nextgov. 

A virtual data enclave enables users to access data housed in a remote server on their individual desktop, while ensuring that such data cannot be downloaded or removed from the secure environment.

Along with workplace fatality data from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries along with data from the National Longitudinal Surveys. The contractor awarded the contract from the BLS will be tasked with expanding the existing data distribution system and focusing on upgrading data security.

“A VDE ensures that BLS data can be conveniently accessed from across the nation while meeting security requirements for accessing confidential data,” the agency said. 

Labor representatives added that a pilot VDE is currently being tested for several projects. 

The agency has prioritized modernizing its handling of such resources, having automated other data encoding processes in recent years. Its plans to upgrade to a VDE also coincide with the Biden administration’s larger push for more sophisticated technological infrastructure within the federal government.