Information for Research
General Information
The Privacy Office asks that you understand the nature of the data that you will be using in your research. We now have a tool, created by the TAMU IT Security Group, that can help you in the data classification process. For those of you who may think you may have data that may be sensitive in nature, this tool can help properly classify that data to allow us to create the right data security environment and privacy protocols in managing the life cycle of this information. Here is a link to the tool:
https://it.tamu.edu/community/tools/data-classification.php#question-1
FERPA Research Guidance
This document provides guidance to researchers on how they can access student education records maintained by Texas A&M in accordance with FERPA.
Access to Educational Records for Research
Office of General Counsel Overview and Guidance
OGC Guidance on Conducting Research with PHI
The document below will give researchers information on different mechanisms that will allow for PHI to be used for research.
OGC Guidance on Conducting Research with PHI
Resources
STARS
Another resource that the Privacy Office would like to promote is Secure Technologies for Aggie Researchers (STAR). STAR provides a collection of new, cloud-based resources that facilitate both rapid access and simplified procurement for researchers and clinicians working with controlled, confidential or critical classifications of data, which includes HIPAA-covered requirements. Email star@tamu.edu for more information or visit the STAR website at https://it.tamu.edu/star/index.php
VIDAL
Texas Virtual Data Library (Texas ViDaL)
Are you looking for a collaborative computing environment that is easy to use and can handle data science projects with large RAM and GPUs ?
Texas Virtual Data Library (Texas ViDaL) computing servers are a new onsite free super computing infrastructure managed by TAMU HPRC and might be a good fit for your next data science project. If you have projects you want to put on ViDaL, please contact Dr. Hye-Chung Kum for more information.
Visit the Vidal website at https://vidal.tamu.edu/index.php
Many Other Compute Resources
Texas A&M University Information Technology provides a large variety of physical and virtual , onsite or offsite, compute environments for researchers. These compute environments range from Aggie Cloud, Google’s GCP, Microsoft’s Azure, and physical or virtual custom built systems per researcher’s specifications. These compute environments can be rapidly provided, can be used for regulated or non regulated data, and accommodate regular or high performance needs as well.
Email ra@tamu.edu for more information.
Business Associate Agreement (BAA) Guidance
If you are a covered entity and you would be sharing personal health information (PHI) with a third party, one of the options that will allow you to do this is a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). Below is the link to the most recent BAA template. This template is watermarked. You may review this template to verify that you have the most recent BAA version. As always, please validate with the Privacy Officer whether a BAA is needed. The Privacy Officer can then approve moving forward.
https://privacy.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/BAA-Template-TAMU-as-BAA_Sept2020.pdf
If we as an entity are being asked to sign a BAA from an external covered entity, below is a template of a BAA that we would initially propose. This template is watermarked and only meant to be used when we are asked to be the Business Associate. Please contact the Privacy Officer to validate that this is the appropriate mechanism. It will have to be approved by the Privacy Officer in order to proceed.
https://privacy.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/BAA-Template-TAMU-as-Covered-Entity_Sept2020.pdf