Contact: Robbie Ward
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A Mississippi State sociology professor is joining a national advisory board that helps balance the security of sensitive government data with the needs of academic and other researchers.
Frank M. Howell, a nationally recognized demographer and faculty member in the university's department of sociology, anthropology and social work, recently was named to the National Opinion Research Center's Technical Advisory Board for the Data Enclave Project.
The ORC program works to balance the access to sensitive federal information used by scientists and scholars with required security methods necessary to protect privacy and the risk of identity theft. Its mission is derived from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which seeks to develop standards for data-sharing through secure Web sites.
Along with NIST, the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago, Ill.--the largest university-based research organization serving the social sciences--will assist with determining appropriate standards and methods for securing the valuable information.
Howell said the Data Enclave Project will provide a federal standard through NIST, the agency tasked with setting standards and measurements, such as the official time, so sensitive government data can be shared with appropriate entities. They will provide two methods of accessing secure information that will serve as a model for future federal agency data-sharing systems, he explained.
The enclave has on-site offices in Washington, D.C., and Chicago and is available by remote access.
Julia Lane, senior NORC vice president and leader of the project's technical advisory board, said she appointed Howell because of his expertise and background.
"He sits on a statistics service advisory board that combined his experience as a researcher," Lane said. "He provides a lot of insight into how and why researchers need access to confidential micro-data."
Tracy S. Arwood, director of the Office of Research Compliance at Clemson University and a widely recognized authority in the research organization Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research, said Howell will contribute to the technical advisory committee in a way to help set responsible and useful standards for access to federal data.
"Frank's experience and expertise in the management of data and in the protection of human subjects make him an excellent choice for this board," said Arwood, former director of MSU's regulatory compliance office. "I am certain the Data Enclave Project will benefit greatly from his knowledge."
Along with Howell, other board members include Nick Greenia, interagency liaison for the Statistics and Income Division at the Internal Revenue Service; Daniel Weinberg, chief of the Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division at the U.S. Census Bureau; Al Zarate, confidentially officer and assistant director of Intervention and Examination Studies at the National Center For Health Statistics; Myron Gutmann, executive director of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan; and Felix Ritchie, economic adviser at the United Kingdom Office for National Statistics.
In addition to working alongside other leading professionals in the area of secure national information, Howell said serving on the advisory board will provide experiences helpful when teaching courses to students and access to information not yet available to most people.
"It puts me in a leadership role to try and build a data-rich future for our research," Howell said. "We'll set up a model that will open doors for other federal agencies and other researchers."
Howell holds master's and doctoral degrees from MSU. He joined the faculty in the mid-1980s.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information, contact Dr. Howell at howell@soc.msstate.edu or 662-325-7872. For more about the National Institute of Standards and Time, visit www.nist.gov.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.