Comparisons between Germany and France are the subject of numerous research projects that are also widely used in public policy. CASD and the research center (FDZ) of the Federal Employment Agency’s IAB (Institute for Employment Research) in Germany have been collaborating for many years to facilitate work on their respective datasets. Agreements made under IDAN (International Data Access Network) https://idan.network/ had made it possible to set up “safe rooms” from which researchers could access French and German data from a single location, via each country’s own access systems.
The two partners had also worked together to document some of the datasets available at CASD and FDZ/IAB that are particularly similar and can be used for comparisons on career trajectories and labor market issues https://idan.network/wp-content/uploads/data_report_03-20_en.pdf.
A new pilot agreement has just been signed to allow joint use of this data within the same secure research environment for projects that require it. Once the project has been approved on both sides, according to their respective procedures, and with the explicit agreement of the data producers concerned, the IAB will be able to entrust the necessary data to CASD, so that it can be placed in the project’s research environment at CASD—thus accessible via SD-Box from France, Germany, or any other country in the EU area. This pilot agreement, carried out on a research project, will make it possible to test the implementation procedures and assess their relevance.
This pilot agreement is a major step forward, demonstrating that it is possible to achieve joint and secure use, in compliance with GDPR, of granular data from different countries. This success is the result of joint efforts and trust patiently built between the two partners.
