California Policy Lab hosted projects (web)
Citation
California Policy Lab (CPL). “CPL Hosted Projects.” Web page, date not stated (gives fees for fiscal years 2026 and 2027). https://www.capolicylab.org/cpl-hosted-projects/. Read 2026-11-09.
Bottom line
- CPL runs a Secure Data Hub. It hosts its own projects and “hosted projects” that researchers outside CPL staff lead, in the University of California (UC) and beyond.
- CPL charges fees to recover its costs. The page gives nine fees for fiscal years 2026 and 2027, from $869 for one month of data hosting to $12,529 for a credit-panel linkage.
- The page lists 210 hosted projects from 2020 to 2026. Most use the UC Consumer Credit Panel (UC-CCP).
Background
The California Policy Lab is a UC research center. This page explains how CPL supports research by other teams on its data infrastructure. It gives the services, the fee table and a list of hosted projects with their team members and publications. Project types include UC-CCP, California Department of Social Services (CDSS) hosted, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), CMS and “Other hosted”.
Key claims
- “we built a Secure Data Hub that can support multiple projects led by a wide variety of researchers.” (CPL helps facilitate policy research)
- ““hosted projects” that are not conducted by CPL’s research staff but may be led by non-CPL or CPL-affiliated researchers within the University of California system and beyond.” (CPL helps facilitate policy research)
- “Maintaining CPL’s high level of data security through monitoring and logging user activity, reviewing research results to ensure they do not contain personally identifiable information, and other protocols.” (CPL helps facilitate policy research)
- “For hosted projects, the researchers are the main point of contact with their government partners.” (CPL helps facilitate policy research)
- “CPL is funded mainly by foundation grants, and so we generally need to charge fees for the support we offer to hosted projects. These fees merely recoup our costs for providing the services involved — we do not make a profit.” (Costs and fees)
- “These fees are certified and approved by UC on annual basis. The rates change on July 1 of each year.” (Costs and fees)
- Virtual machine fee, $8,522 in FY 26 and $9,256 in FY27: “Use of a VM on CPL’s Secure Data Hub for the length of one project Additional fees apply for especially large storage or compute needs (>500GB storage, >32GB RAM, or >6 VCPU).” (fee table)
Evidence and method
A program page from a UC research center. The fee table gives nine named fees for two fiscal years. The project table gives a number, type, name and team for each project, and links to publications where they exist. The library counted 210 project rows; 148 include UC-CCP in their type. The page gives no total revenue, budget or count of users.
Limits
The page does not describe the hardware of the Secure Data Hub beyond the virtual machine limits. It does not give the fees for “especially large storage or compute needs”. It does not state who can apply or how CPL decides on a request. It says CPL “cannot guarantee the quality of the research or the accuracy of the results” of hosted projects. It does not mention AI or CalCompute.