Privact Act/ SORN Letter

DATE:

May 1, 2019

TO:

Mikia P. Currie
Branch Chief, Project Clearance Officer
Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration (OPERA)

FROM :

NIH Privacy Act Officer

SUBJECT:

Applicability of the Privacy Act: Surveys to Support Conference, Meeting,
Workshop, and Poster Session Registration Generic Clearance (OD)

I have reviewed the OPERA submission to OMB referenced above. The surveys will allow NIH
to select and register the most appropriate number of researchers to participate in a poster
session, identify speakers and panelists with desired expertise on a specific topic to be covered at
a meeting, or determine which researchers would mostly likely benefit from a training course or
other opportunity.
I have determined that the Privacy Act will apply to this data collection, which includes the
collection of personally identifiable information (PII) such as the respondent’ s first and last
name, email, gender, and other identifiers stored in a system designed to be retrieved by a
personal identifier.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) directly sponsors, organizes, and conducts researchrelated activities such as conferences, workshops, meetings, poster sessions, and training courses.
These activities are designed to be relevant to the current state of research in a given field or to
the current stage of participants’ research projects or careers. In order for such activities to be
timely and to optimally use available resources to address needs and opportunities within the
research community, it is necessary for NIH to have a means to register and select the most
appropriate participants, according to the type or purpose of a given activity.
The data collection is covered by NIH Privacy Act Systems of Record 09-25-0156, “ Records of
Participants in Programs and Respondents in Surveys Used to Evaluate Programs of the Public
Health Service, HHS/PHS/NIH/OD.” If you have questions, please contact me at (301) 4026201.

Celeste Dade-Vinson
NIH Privacy Act Officer