Privacy Act memo

DATE:

May 18, 2022

TO:

Bell Cooper, Ph.D.
NIH Workf orce Enhancement Branch
Of f ice of the Director (OD)

FROM:

NIH Senior Of f icial f or Privacy

SUBJECT:

Applicability of the Privacy Act: NIH Workplace Civility and Equity Survey (OD)

I have reviewed the OD submission to the Of f ice of Management and Budget under the Paperwork
Reduction Act f or a new inf ormation collection which proposes to email a survey to NIH employees,
trainees, contractors, volunteers and other staf f to examine areas within NIH where there may be
organizational concentration of discrimination or harassment. The results of the survey will be used
by three primary stakeholders: the NIH Civil Branch, the NIH Of f ice of Equity, Diversity and
Inclusion, and NIH’s UNITE committee. The government contractor, Westat, will administer the
survey and provide aggregate results to the Workf orce Support and Development Division (WSDD).
WSDD will f acilitate analysis and reporting to provide to the stakeholders.
Collecting inf ormation about the demographic categories of NIH staf f is essential f or NIH to
adequately support Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility initiatives and promote a civil
environment. It will allow the Agency to equitably examine the workplace climate f or NIH staf f . The
inf ormation will be analyzed at the aggregate level. The results will be used to target areas where
harassment and discrimination are occurring and to open areas of f urther inquiry. All sensitive
demographic questions are voluntary. Respondents are notif ied of the conf identiality of their
responses on the landing page of the survey. Respondents will also be notif ied of the purpose of
the survey and the maintenance of the data in the email communications to all NIH staf f .
I have determined that the Privacy Act will apply to this data collection, which includes the collection
of personally identif iable inf ormation (PII) such as name, email address, and other identif iers stored
in a system designed to be retrieved by a personal identif ier.
The data collection is covered by NIH Privacy Act System of Records 09-25-0156, “Records of
Participants in Programs and Respondents in Surveys Used to Evaluate Programs of the Public
Health Service.” If you have questions, please contact me at (301) 402-6201.

Celeste Dade-Vinson
NIH Senior Of f icial f or Privacy