California needed a secure way to enable access to its cross-agency Cradle-to-Career data to support research and collaboration.

The California Cradle-to-Career Data System (C2C) is building a statewide longitudinal system that links data sets from school districts, higher education institutions, workforce organizations and social services. From these linked data, connections can be drawn in a student’s journey from early care and education to skills training and employment. These insights lead to more informed policy decisions, with the goal of improving educational opportunities and outcomes for Californians.

To make full use of this resource, the state needed a high-performing, user-friendly environment where approved researchers could access, share, and work with restricted-use data. Because these data span multiple agencies and sources and include sensitive information, the environment also needed to be secure and compliant, with clear governance controls and reliable user support.

C2C selected the NORC Data Enclave^® as its virtual research environment.

With support from lead partner SunstoneIT, NORC’s Advanced Data Solutions (ADS) team deployed an instance of the NORC Data Enclave tailored to C2C’s needs and ready for an initial group of staff, researchers, and analysts, with room to scale as the program grows.

These authorized users can now securely access and analyze C2C’s restricted-use data within the Data Enclave’s high-performance computational infrastructure that also includes a host of available database, statistical, analytical, visualization, and reporting tools. The ADS team also provides managed services, reporting, user support resources, and a responsive help desk. With the Data Enclave, C2C has a proven, fully compliant and secure research environment, backed by a team aligned with its mission and equipped to support it.

The Data Enclave is powering secure and timely C2C data research that will inform education and workforce decisions in California.

With the Data Enclave in place, C2C can accelerate research and analysis on education and career pathways that can guide program improvements, funding decisions, and long-term planning.

As data are loaded and analysis work begins, the Data Enclave will support the production of approved findings, reports, and analyses that will help California leaders and stakeholders understand outcomes and improve opportunities. By establishing a secure research environment for its statewide data system, C2C positions itself to generate meaningful insights that benefit learners, policymakers, and the public.