ICPSR Council Minutes
June 23-24, 2005

Council members present: Darren Davis, Ilona Einowski, Charles Franklin, John Handy, Mark Hayward, Paula Lackie, Nancy McGovern, Sam Myers, Jim Oberly, Ruth Peterson, Walter Piovesan, Ron Rindfuss

ICPSR staff present: Erik Austin, Rita Bantom, Bryan Beecher, Dieter Burrell, Linda Detterman, Peter Granda, Bree Gunter, Myron Gutmann, Hank Heitowit, Peter Joftis, Stacey Kubitz, Felicia LeClere, Asmat Noori, JoAnne OiRourke, Amy Pienta, Mary Vardigan

Visitors: Dominique Joye (CESSDA Representative); Pilar Rey del Castillo (European Observer)

Approval of Minutes

Staff noted that there were some minor errors in these minutes, and Council approved the minutes with those changes.

Director's Report

Personnel and Facilities

Acting Director Erik Austin reported that Amy Pienta returned from maternity leave in April and that Felicia LeClere began her appointment at ICPSR on June 1. He also noted that two sociologists, Corey Colyer and Janet Stamatel, would be leaving ICPSR later this summer to begin teaching positions at other universities. He also reported that the new ISR Director, James Jackson, has been given an office at ICPSR.

ICPSR has had several visitors over the spring and early summer months, including Don Davison from Rollins College, who participated in the OR Sabbatical program through the month of June; Chuck Prysby and Carmine Scavo, who visited ICPSR for a week to develop SETUPS 2004; and Abeyomi Israel and David Poyer, two visitors from Morehouse College who are currently doing research at ICPSR.

Collections and IT

Austin noted that 348 new collections have been acquired from January through May of 2005. Some highlights from these are new additions to the Detroit Area Studies, the Afrobarometer Surveys, and Midlife Development in the U.S.

Two new Web sites were recently launched at ICPSR: the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (otherwise known as Data-PASS, or the Library of Congress project) and a new site for the Chicago Neighborhoods project.

SDA 2.0 was recently added to the ICPSR Web site, and a production Nesstar server was purchased. Additionally, several new quality assurance tools have been added for Web site content and data processing.

Austin also reported that Steve Burling and Edward Czilli on the computing staff have completed the SANS security training.

Proposal Update

The following proposals were recently funded:

Health and Medical Care Archive (funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)
National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (National Institute of Justice component)
NSF Digital Preservation Research n Incentives Study for Data Depositors to Submit Archive-Ready Datasets (with UM School of Information)
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data ArchiveoSAMHDA (five-year award)

The following proposals are pending:

Archiving the Retirement History Longitudinal Survey, 1969-1979
National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (Bureau of Justice Statistics component)
Many Faces of Social Disadvantage: Missing Links in Health Disparities (Felicia LeClere)
Longitudinal Data on Juvenile Delinquency (OJJDP)

Budget Update

ICPSR was budgeted for a $500,000 gain for fiscal year 2005, and is now forecasting a $440,000 gain. Several factors contributed to this new forecast: higher than expected Summer Program tuition, $53,000 in principal and interest revenue from an ISR loan, the retirement of one senior manager, and a $460,000 loan to ISR. Anticipated reserves are $2.4 million.

We are forecasting a $182,000 gain for fiscal year 2006. ICPSR will continue to take a conservative approach to budgeting and building the reserves.

Workshops and Conferences

ICPSR has held several workshops since the March Council meeting, including:

Child Care Policy Research Consortium Annual Meeting
Making Your Data a Resource for Others (at AERA annual meeting)
Data Sharing and Dissemination (Ann Arbor)
ICPSR Data Services (Central Michigan University)
Empirical Political Science and the Liberal Arts Education Workshop (Mellon Foundation-funded)
Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey

Several staff members have also attended conferences to give papers and to staff the ICPSR conference booth at many different professional meetings from March through June. These include:

American Education Research Association
Population Association of America
IASSIST
Midwest Political Science Association
Western Political Science Association
State Politics and Policy
Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences
Homicide Research Working Group
Preservation and Access for Electronic College and University Resources (ECURE)
3rd International Workshop on Comparative Survey Design and Implementation
American Council on Aging/American Society on Aging
Western Social Science Association
Health and Society Scholars (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)
Sloan Foundation Annual Working Families Conference
Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network Annual Meeting
Society for Research in Child Development

Austin also reported that the IASSIST 2006 conference, which is scheduled to take place May 23-26, 2006, will be held in Ann Arbor. ICPSR will serve as the hosting department, with the University of Michigan Libraries and the School of Information also serving as sponsors. The IASSIST conference is funded solely by registration fees and ICPSR will incur no costs from hosting this event.

Confidential Data at ICPSR

Erik Austin gave a presentation highlighting some of the major points detailed in his white paper, ICPSR Practices for Preserving Respondent Confidentiality. He began by setting forth the primary governing principles guiding ICPSRis approach to minimization of disclosure risk:

The stipulation in the ICPSR Bylaws that research data are to be used ONLY ifor statistical analysis and reporting of aggregated informationi and not for identification of individuals
To identify individual respondents is unethical and/or illegal
ICPSR is obliged to take steps necessary to protect respondent confidentiality

He went on to discuss security of data at ICPSR, the practices that ICPSR employs to preserve respondent confidentiality in archived data, and the challenges faced by ICPSR and the social science research community.

ICPSR Practices

Staff are trained to be aware of potential disclosure risks in all data that they review and assess. They look for both direct identifiers such as Social Security numbers and indirect identifiers -- those which, used in conjunction with other identifiers, have the potential to disclose an individualis identity. Staff are also trained to be aware of public databases, increasingly available on the Internet, that might be used by a idata intruderi to match or merge with ICPSR data in order to identify respondents. Finally, ICPSR staff are instructed to fully review the context of a dataset, especially in terms of geography. Smaller geographic units are much more problematic than national surveys.

To sum up ICPSRis approach to confidential data, staff practice the five iREis:

REquire depositors to remove identifiers. All incoming data must be reviewed for identifiers even if the data depositor has attested on the Data Deposit Form to having expunged them. ICPSR has experienced mixed compliance with this requirement for data depositors to remove identifiers.
REview Incoming Datasets. All data submitted to ICPSR are reviewed for the presence of both direct and indirect identifiers.
REturn Dataset to Depositor. Data with direct identifiers are returned to the original submitter. Otherwise, ICPSR could be at risk of having to grant access to these data as a result of FOIA requests.
REdact Variables with Disclosure Potential. Staff are instructed to identify problematic variables, analyze their properties, formulate a data processing plan, and have the plan reviewed both internally and externally.
REstrict Some Variables. ICPSR first attempts to create a public-use dataset, which may involve removing or recoding sensitive variables. The full dataset may become a restricted-use dataset, for which the researcher must complete a legal contract with a comprehensive data protection plan in order to gain access. ICPSR has about 200 such restricted datasets and has entered into 500-600 restricted-use contracts in the past several years. Only a small number of the 200 restricted-use datasets have been ordered.

For those datasets that have even tighter security restrictions, ICPSR has established a Secure Data Enclave at its headquarters in Ann Arbor, which researchers may visit to use the data in a tightly controlled environment. The Data Enclave is now fully equipped in terms of hardware and security, and the University of Michiganis legal department is currently reviewing the policies and procedures. When that review is completed, the enclave will be operational and will be announced to the community. ICPSR staff have six datasets they are pursuing for enclave access only.

Confidentiality practices at ICPSR are detailed on its Web site, but this information could be made more prominent. Web staff will look into reorganizing this content to make it more visible.

Challenges

The challenges for the future include:

Creating secure data intake procedures with no possibility for intrusion
Inspections and audits
Minimizing human error through refresher courses or a data security officer
Laws with which ICPSR must comply
Due diligence n Are we doing enough to protect human subjects?
Deposit refusals because of confidentiality concerns
New forms of data (e.g., video) and their concomitant confidentiality risks

Council discussion raised several important points. First, a question was raised about U.S. standards vs. international standards with respect to confidentiality. For the most part, European countries are more restrictive in terms of providing access to data. Data disseminators must agree to uphold the same conditions that original respondents agreed to when data were gathered. The access policies for government official statistics tend to be more restrictive than for academic research data.

Another discussion point was that it is important to have IRB approval for the secondary uses of these restricted data. ICPSR forms do include this requirement. Beyond that, should ICPSR hire a confidentiality officer with signoff authority for all released datasets or should it perhaps set up its own IRB-like mechanism that would review all studies before they were made public? What are our responsibilities in this regard as a trusted data repository? The concern is that these mechanisms could become bottlenecks to timely release of data. We might, though, think about hiring a confidentiality resource person who could serve as a resource for data processors but without signoff authority.

It is not clear at this point why there has not been more use of the restricted data. If the conditions of restricted-use contracts were too onerous, ICPSR would have heard about it, so that is probably not the reason. It could be that the public-use counterparts are sufficient in some cases. It may also be that the substance of these restricted datasets is not in sufficient demand at this time. For the major heavily used datasets like Add-Health and HRS, researchers begin to exhaust the potential of public use variables and start to ask for additional variables they can use. This is the point at which there is more demand for restricted data.

It was noted that the Best Practices component of the Disclosure Project, which involves ICPSR and other units of ISR, will develop tools and procedures as it identifies the best practices for preserving confidentiality.

Demography of MyData Users

Mary Vardigan reported what staff has learned since the introduction of MyData, a new user registration and authentication system, was launched in September, 2004. The system features both an email address login and password and allows users to create an account to set preferences for downloads and to review their download history. Notification services are also available with MyData. The first service, coming shortly, will notify users when a downloaded file has been updated. Additional services will include notification of new studies in a data series and release of new collections in a topical area in which the user indicated an interest.

An analysis of usage of MyData indicates that:

As of April 30, 2005, users had crested 25,371 accounts with new accounts increasing at the rate of approximately 3,000 a month.
The majority of accounts derive from educational addresses (56 percent) but about one in four accounts originates from a commercial address.
Approximately 65-71 percent of all downloads derive from member institutions.
Forty percent of MyData users are graduate students, 26 percent are undergraduates, and university faculty comprise about 16 percent of the total user population.
One in three users prefers SPSS as a software preference, 12 percent prefer Stata, and 6 percent chose SAS. About two out of five users, however, did not indicate a preference.

Staff will gather additional information on the relatively large numbers of users logging on with a .com address as well as downloads from nonmember institutions. This may help us to identify potential new members.

Additional questions raised by Council for further study include:

How to interpret the large number of undergraduate downloads? Staff will analyze the types of data files that undergraduates downloaded since this group was believed to be an underserved population. Are they mainly downloading data collections for course work? What does significant undergraduate usage indicate in terms of possible new membership outreach efforts to two and four-year colleges?
Can we classify institutions by the number and type of their downloads?
What additional information can we obtain about the .com downloads?
Will the distribution of software preferences change after ICPSR produces full-suite software for more collections?
What does the next-generation market, which is today's undergraduates, look like in terms of emerging trends?

Council was informed that all MyData information was stored on a separate server with restricted access not accessible through any network and any analyses of these data would take place within the context of ICPSRis privacy policy.

Budget Committee

Council: John Handy (Chair), Mark Hayward, Nancy McGovern, Walter Piovesan

Staff: Myron Gutmann, Stacey Kubitz

FY2005 Year-End Projection

ICPSR staff began the Budget Committee meeting by reminding Council that we had budgeted a $500K gain for FY2005. Due to actual revenues and expenses being under budget, staff was now forecasting a $440K gain. This estimate includes the following: higher than expected Summer Program tuition, $53K principal and interest revenue from ISR loan, senior management retirement, and $460K loan to ISR. Total reserves are anticipated to accumulate to $2.4 million as of 2005is close of business.

FY2006 Budget

ICPSR staff presented its FY2006 budget for formal approval to take place in the full Council committee report session. Staff has budgeted for a fiscal year gain totaling $182K, supporting the goal to rebuild reserves.

The Budget Committee did not dedicate a significant amount of time discussing the FY2006 budget as they did at the March 2005 meeting. Only minor changes took place between the March and June 2005 meetings. Staff reminded Council that 2006is investments would be startup costs for the minority archive (primarily consultants) and offering courses beyond the summer months. Staff will also invest time in writing grant proposals during 2006. Some time was spent discussing what the 2007 budget might look like. Council is likely to see instructional and senior recruitment investments. The Committee also discussed budget displays for the Preservation and Security unit as they relate to the emerging Trusted Digital Repository certification requirements to prove sustainability. Staff will focus more attention on this area when a preservation officer is recruited.

Quantitative Research and Training Committee

Council: Charles Franklin, Paula Lackie, Sam Myers, Jim Oberly (Chair) p>

Staff: Dieter Burrell, Hank Heitowit

2005 Summer Program

A brief update was provided by the staff on the 2005 Summer Program, including an overview of the curriculum, and an estimate that registration /enrollment would be at all-time highs, exceeding 700 students.

SIMI Update

Updates were provided on several SIMI projects.

Charles Prysby and Carmine Scavo recently produced the latest version of the SETUPS teaching package, based on the 2004 American National Election Study. The innovation this year is that ICPSR funded an online Web-based version of the material, in addition to the stand-alone version that had been traditionally produced for APSA. Plans were to showcase the product at the 2005 APSA convention in late August.

Don Davison (Political Science, Rollins College) was invited to the Committee meeting to describe his latest teaching package. This product was a result of his participation in the ICPSR OR Sabbatical program. The teaching package titled "Continuity and Change in American National Elections" utilized National Election Studies time series data from 1952 to 2004.

There was a short discussion of the ICPSR/SIMI prize competition for best teaching module in the social sciences. At the time of the meeting we had received two submissions.

An evaluation of the SIMI activity is due to be reported to the Council in the fall.

Summer Program Diversity

There was an extended discussion on ways to diversify the Summer Program. New courses were proposed, and strategies were suggested to increase minority representation in the student body, and particularly in the instructional staff.

Core Program administrative staff were directed to prepare a report on the demographic profile of the Program participants, and in addition to create a plan to diversify the instructional/teaching staff.

Outreach Efforts

Linda Detterman joined the Committee briefly to present a report on various options for organizational outreach efforts. These included: pre-conference workshops, during-conference workshops, conference exhibiting, conference poster sessions, and campus visits. The benefits and costs of each activity were presented as well.

Archival Development Committee

Council: Darren Davis, Ilona Einowski, Ruth Peterson, Ron Rindfuss (Chair)

Staff: Linda Detterman, Peter Granda, Chris Maxwell, Amy Pienta

Strategy to Acknowledge Data Producers

ICPSR staff presented Council with a plan for acknowledging data producers. A discussion about how to determine levels of distinction ensued. Ron Rindfuss summarized this discussion as follows: the Committee supports periodic, objective assessment of the scientific impact of the contributions of data depositors. There are two basic ways we could evaluate a depositoris impact: through a reputational evaluation made by experts in the field or by an objective metric (e.g., number of citations, number of downloads). At the March 2006 Council meeting the Archival Development Committee would like a report on how to evaluate the quality of data in the archive.

As part of this plan, the Committee also discussed whether we should consider complimentary professional memberships to nonmember depositors. The Committee recommended we not consider this option at this time.

As part of the plan, ICPSR staff recommended that we rename the current download file that accompanies data to reflect the fact that it contains the citation. Producing individual citation files would incur significant resources to retrofit all of the studies. We also proposed renaming the tab on the Web site (the new name of the tab/file would be "Description/Citation"). This strategy will help ensure that appropriate citations for the study are used by data users who download the data. Members of the Archival Development Committee considered this a good solution.

Also, as part of the plan, the Committee proposed a Depositor Web Page and discussed the possible content. Council members recommended we not include biographical information about each depositor.

Status Report on Revision of ICPSRis Collection Development Policy

ICPSR staff presented a document describing plans for drafting a new Collection Development Policy. Council members considered the recommendation that we archive qualitative data. They recommended that we focus our efforts on collecting mixed method data because it is a natural tie in to the quantitative data in the archive. Regarding the collection of data with embedded software, they suggested we allow the data to be collected, but do not encourage the submission of these data types in the revision of the policy. The Committee especially underscored the importance of archiving data that would support diversity research (e.g., health disparities research). The Committee recommended that we not describe the collection policies of the topical archives but focus on describing the collection policies of the general archive.

Statement on Confidentiality and Mechanisms Involved in Handling Restricted Data

This agenda item was discussed in a plenary session with the entire Council. There was no additional discussion during ADC.

Report on Strategy for Data Archived Elsewhere

This was not discussed due to time limitations.

Terrorism Archive

ICPSR staff described receipt of pilot funding to explore the feasibility of creating a terrorism archive. ADC raised concerns about the research potential for such an archive. ADC did not have enough information to make a recommendation about this pilot project.

Planning and Policy Committee

Council: Charles Franklin, Mark Hayward (Chair), Jim Oberly, Ron Rindfuss

Staff: Erik Austin, Rita Bantom, Myron Gutmann

Brief Updates

Staff listed an unusually large number of special visitors scheduled to spend time at ICPSR during the summer of 2005. They include Don Davison (Political Science, Rollins College), the recipient of the 2005 OR Sabbatical, working on two instructional packages; Charles Prysby (Political Science, University of North Carolina, Greensboro) and Carmine Scavo (Political Science, East Carolina University), preparing SETUPS 2004; summer intern Abeyomi Israel, an undergraduate at Morehouse College; and David Poyer (Economics, Morehouse College), visiting in June to attend a Summer Course workshop and spend time designing a research project in conjunction with NACDA Project Manager James McNally. Council members urged the staff to better publicize the Summer Internship Program, as they felt there would be considerable interest at the member institutions in this opportunity.

New ISR Director James Jackson will take occupancy of an office in Perry as part of his effort to better integrate the Perry Building complex with the main ISR building on Thompson Street. Jackson expects to use his Perry office for continuing to work on his research agenda while Director of ISR.

Construction work continues on the Perry Building addition, and is back on schedule for a March 2006 completion. It appears isafei to schedule the October Council meeting (Thursday, October 20) at the Perry Building. At that time, workers will be constructing interior walls in Perry II, and have agreed to work on the side of the addition farthest away from Perry I that day.

Two members of ICPSRis Collection Development staff have received PhDis and are leaving to take faculty positions at other universities. Janet Stamatel (PhD in Sociology, University of Chicago, 2003) has accepted a position in Criminal Justice at SUNY-Albany. Corey Colyer (PhD in Sociology, Syracuse University) will teach in West Virginia Universityis Sociology department. Felicia LeClere (formerly at the University of Notre Dame) began her duties at ICPSR on June 1, managing the Data Sharing for Demographic Research project. Finally, an internal committee established by Myron Gutmann has nearly completed its review of seven senior ICPSR staff membersi positions for the appropriateness of their current job titles. That committee delivered its report to Gutmann just before the June Council meeting.

Staff briefed the Committee on plans for the 2006 meeting of the International Association of Social Science Information Service and Technology (IASSIST), to be held in Ann Arbor on May 22-27, 2006. ICPSR is spearheading the local arrangements for that meeting, and is co-host, along with the University of Michigan Libraries and its School of Information.

Council Committee Charges

The Committee discussed the structure of Councilis committees, and reviewed the charges assigned to each of the current committees. There was widespread agreement that this structure was in need of review and revision, to better address the current focus of ICSPR activities. Committee Chair Mark Hayward offered several suggestions for a reconstituted committee structure, including combining the current Budget Committee with the Planning and Policy Committee, folding the Information Technology Committeeis responsibilities into another committee focused on more substantive matters, and explicitly assigning to a committee responsibility for digital preservation issues. Hayward agreed to convene an ad hoc committee comprised of both Council members and staff, to review the current structure and offer proposals for a revised structure to Council at its October 2005 meeting.

ICPSR Response to NSF Report on Long-Lived Data Collections

The National Science Board of the U.S. National Science Foundation issued a report in April of 2005 on policies for preserving and sharing long-lived social science data collections. ICPSR submitted to NSF its response to this report, and these two documents (included in the Council briefing book) were the basis of a discussion by this Committee. Myron Gutmann advocated for ICPSR representation in all national discussions such as this. The Committee urged staff to increase its participation in such national organizations as the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and the American Association for Public Opinion Research, where these discussions have been underway for some time. The Committee suggested ICPSRis staffing an exhibit at the 2006 SAA annual meeting. Members also thought it valuable to explore the preparation of a position paper on the icampus repositoryi concept that is garnering some support in higher education circles.

University of Michigan Position Classification Project

Rita Bantom outlined the University of Michiganis iClassification Projecti that has been underway for three years. It is an effort to redesign staff position descriptions and titles to map more closely with the employment market more generally. Central to the Universityis efforts has been the creation of imarket titlesi and iworking titlesi for all staff jobs, as well as the elimination of some titles quite familiar to most of higher education (including Research Assistant and Research Associate.) New titles have been assigned to all ICPSR staff members as a result of this program. Gutmann and Bantom reported a significant amount of staff dissatisfaction with the new assigned market titles. The next phase of the Project is to align compensation to the new market titles.

Nominating and Prizes Committee Reports

Both the Nominating and Prizes Committees met by conference calls in May. Council members on the Nominating Committee were Mark Hayward (Chair), Ilona Einowski, John Handy, and Ron Rindfuss. Outside members of the Committee were Bill Jacoby (Political Science, Michigan State University) and Kathy Isaacson (Library and Media Center, Lawrence University). Myron Gutmann and Erik Austin participated in the call ex officio. This Committee recommended the renomination of Nancy McGovern (University Library, Cornell University) and Sam Myers (Economics, University of Minnesota), currently completing expiring terms of two Council members who had resigned. The other nominees selected were Kathleen Harris (Sociology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Rodolfo de la Garza (Political Science, Columbia University), Aletha Huston (Psychology, University of Texas at Austin), and Michael Haines (Economics, Colgate University). Nominated as the next Council Chair was Ruth Peterson (Sociology, Ohio State University).

The Prizes Committee consisted of Council members John Handy and Paula Lackie, previous Miller Award winner Jerome Clubb (History Emeritus, University of Michigan), previous Flanigan Award winner Ann Janda (University Library, Northwestern University,) and ICPSR staff member Mary Morris. The Committeeis selections for the William Flanigan Award for Distinguished Service as an ICPSR Official Representative were Ilona Einowski (UCData, University of California, Berkeley), Charles Humphrey (Data Library, University of Alberta), and Edward Nelson (Sociology, California State University, Fresno). Chosen for the 2005 Warren Miller Award for Meritorious Service to the Social Sciences was HallimanWinsborough (Sociology Emeritus, University of Wisconsin, Madison).

Council members discussed increasing publicity for the Miller award, and recommended the placing of ads in professional association newsletters at least six months before the selection committee meets in the next cycle. Also suggested was the creation of a flier to further advertise this award.

Sloan Foundation Initiative

Erik Austin reported on the Alfred P. Sloan Foundationis annual Working Families Conference on the Work-Life Balance, which he attended on May 17-19, 2005. He was asked to make a presentation on the value and benefits of archiving data collected by researchers through grants with the Foundation. Sloan Foundation officers have expressed an interest in establishing a relationship with ICPSR for the purpose of archiving datasets produced by their Working Families Network, and had discussed such a relationship with Myron Gutmann. This initiative is at an early stage of discussion; further developments will be reported to Council as they occur.

Grant Applications Submitted Since March

Council briefly reviewed abstracts for grant proposals submitted by ICPSR since its March 2005 meeting. These included a two-year renewal of the Health and Medical Care Archive (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation); health disparities research (Centers for Disease Control); Year 3 of the Child Care Collaborative and Archive (Child Care Bureau, through Columbia University); one-year renewal of the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (National Institute of Justice and Bureau of Justice Statistics); and archiving of the Retirement History Longitudinal Survey, 1969-1979 (National Institute on Aging).

Membership Relations Committee

Council: John Handy, Sam Myers, Ruth Peterson (Chair), Walter Piovesan

Staff: Linda Detterman, Mary Vardigan

Membership Activity Report

Membership activity for the 2005 fiscal year has been positive overall. Eighteen new memberships have been added (four are rejoining institutions). Two members are dropping beginning in 2006 and one member was dropped for non-payment. It was noted that ICPSR is in the process of negotiating a national membership in China that should begin on July 1, 2005.

Discussion of membership activity led to two requests to achieve more understanding of membership activity and utilization of ICPSR services.

First, the Committee would like to add trending information (drop/adds) over the course of three to four years for a visual representation of membership activity. This report is to become part of the standard membership activity report. The information is to be presented by subgroups (i.e., Carnegie classes) and will be included in the October 2005 binder. This item was identified as an action item during the Open Session.

Second, a recurring utilization report will be produced and also included in the October 2005 binder. This report will exhibit members by subgroups, including the subgroups identified as iat-risk,i such that utilization of ICPSR services is under consistent periodic monitoring. Desired reporting elements include the average number of downloads, average number of individuals and departments downloading at institutions, number of Summer Program attendees (short versus long courses), and number of sessions per school. Linda Detterman noted that much of this information is already available, though some will need to be investigated in terms of the ability to isolate the information and do so in an automated manner.

Linda will plan to prepare as much of the desired information as possible in the October binder, including the standard summary report format that will be included in the binder for each Council meeting. Additionally, a more in-depth report on iat-riski institutions will be included in the Member Relations section. It is believed that the standard report will evolve over the next several months as more information becomes available in an automated environment. This item was identified as an action item during the Open Session.

Outreach Analysis

The key finding in this analysis was that all committees, including Membership Relations, need to discuss what outreach goals they desire to achieve for the year ahead and put together a collection of events (i.e., pre-conference workshops, conference exhibits, campus visits, etc.) to achieve those goals. Those events should be communicated to the Conferences Director so they can be coordinated across ICPSR departments.

This discussion led to suggestions of organizations that ICPSR might contact for new membership, particularly new federation memberships. Three organizations to explore include:

National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO)
The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC)
Hispanic Association of Colleges & Universities (HACU)

A progress report on outreach to these organizations will be included in the October 2005 binder. This was identified as an action item during Open Session.

Carnegie Fee Introduction Plan

The Fees Transition Plan was discussed, noting that a mailed letter was sent to each affected institution containing each memberis specific fees for 2007-2011. Additionally, a general email announcing the adoption of the new fee structure went out via OR-Announce. Both of these announcements occurred in early May.

To date, there has been relatively little feedback related to the announcements. It was noted that a few institutions have requested utilization reports and marketing support materials; however, the frequency of these requests has not been markedly increased compared to previous years.

The transition plan will continue through June 2006. Notably, institutions considered iat-riski will be profiled this Fall for a better understanding of their relationship with and use of ICPSR, and marketing support materials are readily available should request for materials be made. Much of the at-risk profiling will be included in the utilization report described under the Membership Activity section above.

Report on Non-Carnegie Institutions

Due to lack of time, this report was not discussed and will be included on the October 2005 agenda.

OR Meeting 2005

Discussion related to the 2005 OR Meeting revolved largely around the Symposium discussants and breakout session participants. All other programming was deemed appropriate and efforts to recruit participants and compile session content are to proceed.

With respect to the Symposium, Committee members desired a more diverse representation across the discussants/participants. With that in mind, Sam Myers and John Handy agreed to contact several individuals to request participation in the symposium and in the three related breakout sessions.

Recommendations for the format of the breakout sessions include two participants to present a short (5-10 minute) talk about their experience surrounding the topic. The third participant will act as a facilitator to encourage questions from the audience and come prepared with intriguing questions for the speakers designed to stimulate audience participation and learning.

During Open Session, Council agreed that it would like to have opportunities to interact with the visiting ORs during the October event. To encourage that environment, the Friday reception held at the Michigan Union will be titled: iReception with the ICPSR Councili and all Council members are encouraged to attend. Council attendees will likely receive specially-designed name tags so that they are easily identified as Council members.

Information Technology Committee

Council: Darren Davis, Ilona Einowski (Chair), Paula Lackie, Nancy McGovern

Staff: Bryan Beecher

Report on SANS Training

Council reviewed the written reports from staff about the recent SANS security training. Council noted that it sounded as if the training had been beneficial to both staff and the organization, and recommended that ICPSR continue with its plans to ensure that one or more staff members are SANS-trained and certified.

Report on Digital Archiving Practices

Nancy McGovern reviewed her written report on digital archiving practices at ICPSR. As part of this review, McGovern described the OAIS reference model for digital archiving, and described how current practices at ICPSR fit into that reference model. McGovern summarized that ICPSR is not in bad shape with regard to digital archiving, but needs to take some actions and give it some focus if ICPSR is to become iOAIS complianti some day. Council asked for ICPSR staff to respond to the review, drafting a short response for the abbreviated October Council meeting, and delivering a more thorough reply at the March 2006 Council meeting.

Update on IT Activities

Bryan Beecher reviewed IT-related highlights covering the period between the March and June Council meetings. Most of the information had already appeared in the earlier Directoris Report.

Internet 2 Site Visit

Council and Beecher discussed the desirability of combining a visit to Internet2is Ann Arbor headquarters with the October Council meeting. Beecher said that he would pursue arranging a site visit.

Open Session

Hayward reviewed the action items from the meeting by committee:

Council requested that the staff provide as much historical context and background as possible when presented with materials to make a decision. Council noted that while it may theoretically be possible for Council to do this themselves, using previous briefing books as sources, they often do not have the time to do so.

Council also recapped the following list of action items:

ACTION ITEM	DUE DATE	RESPONSIBLE PERSON
Archival Development
Report on quality of data in archive	March 2006
Member Relations
Contact minority organizations regarding new Federations	October 2005	Linda Detterman
Report on profile of member utilization based on fee categories	October 2005	Linda Detterman, Mary Vardigan
Revise structure of membership activity report to include data over time	October 2005	Linda Detterman, Bree Gunter
Quantitative Research and Training
Develop plan to increase diversity in the Summer Program	October 2005	Hank Heitowit
Information Technology
Develop security audit checklist	March 2006	Bryan Beecher
Report answers to easier questions from Nancyis report on digital archiving	October 2006	Bryan Beecher
Contact Internet 2 and arrange a site visit	October 2005	Bryan Beecher
Planning and Policy
Appoint subcommittee to review committee structure	July 2005	Mark Hayward, Myron Gutmann
Meet and report discussion on committee structure review	October 2005	Subcommittee
Report on ICPSR best practices	March 2006
Perform case study on ICPSR diversity and professionalism	March 2006

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ICPSR Council Minutes June 23-24, 2005