NEWS

NCAB Passes Resolution on Access to Grantee Data

The National Cancer Advisory Board, at its meeting last month, passed a resolution to abolish a provision of a new law that makes grantee research data available under the Freedom of Information Act (see News, Feb. 3, 1999, p. 211). The resolution follows:

"Whereas, progress in biomedical research depends on the free and open exchange of information; and

"Whereas, the National Cancer Advisory Board recognizes that awardees have an obligation to promptly inform the public of the outcomes and make available the underlying data resulting from publicly funded research, and

"Whereas, the revisions to OMB Circular A-110 ordered by the Omnibus Supplemental Appropriations Act (Public Law 105-277) making research data generated from publicly supported awards available under the Freedom of Information Act could be damaging to scientific research by negatively affecting voluntary participation of human subjects, compromising the confidentiality of medical information, causing premature disclosure of incomplete and possibly contradictory data, and undermining protections for intellectual property rights, and

"Whereas the NCAB is aware that data comes in many forms and can be generated under many different situations, including: data contributed to a project by the investigator; data provided to a project from another non-Federal source; and data created by public/private collaborative studies making it impossible to determine the `ownership' of; and

"Whereas, the NCAB finds that the cost of compliance and time and effort associated with the statutory language could be significant, and individual agencies, institutions, and researchers are not currently reimbursed for costs associated with compliance, and

"Whereas, the collective reservations engendered in investigators by this rule is almost certain to have as an unintended consequence an increasing reluctance to participate in government sponsored research, and to deter young scientists from choosing careers in academic institutions dependent on Federal research support,

"Be it therefore resolved, that the National Cancer Advisory board calls upon national legislators, health professionals, and scientists to support recission of the revisions to the OMB Circular A-110 ordered by Public Law 105-277; and

"Furthermore, be it resolved that the NCAB supports proposing an amendment to the OMB Circular A-110 to allow individual agencies, institutions, and researchers to retain fees from requestors equaling the full incremental costs of obtaining data responsive to FOIA requests."



             
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