Unlocking government administrative data with new California Policy Lab
The California Policy Lab will partner with government agencies to link administrative data, allowing major longitudinal analyses on economic, social service, education and criminal justice systems, and more.
November 29, 2016
A new data center is being established to support University of California faculty and students mining government administrative data to produce cutting-edge policy research on issues from education and criminal justice to social services and labor.
The California Policy Lab teams at UC Berkeley and UCLA are set to harness the potential of the vast data collected through routine provision of services by California government agencies with a one-year, nearly $1 million grant for each campus from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.
It will be housed at UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE).
The lab will partner with several government agencies to create a new secure data warehouse that links administrative data at the city, county and state levels, allowing researchers to do major longitudinal analyses on California’s economic, social service, education and criminal justice systems.
Data already being collected, combined with California population size of an estimated 39 million, allow the possibility of groundbreaking studies that put California at the forefront of policy research, according to Jesse Rothstein, director of the new lab as well as the IRLE, and a UC Berkeley professor of economics and public policy.
Read the full news release about the California Policy Lab here.