NORC Cradle-to-Career data enclave (web)
Citation
NORC at the University of Chicago. “California Cradle-to-Career Data Enclave.” Project Catalog, web page, date not stated (project dates “December 2025 – Present”). https://www.norc.org/research/projects/california-cradle-to-career-data-enclave.html. Read 2026-11-09.
Bottom line
- The California Cradle-to-Career Data System (C2C) chose the NORC Data Enclave as the virtual research environment for its restricted-use data.
- Approved researchers work with the linked state data inside the enclave’s computing environment. NORC gives managed services and user support.
Background
NORC at the University of Chicago publishes this project page in its project catalog. It names C2C as the client and gives the project dates as December 2025 to the present. It is set out as Challenge, Solution and Result. It names SunstoneIT as the lead partner and NORC’s Advanced Data Solutions team as the team that deployed the enclave.
Key claims
- “The California Cradle-to-Career Data System (C2C) is building a statewide longitudinal system that links data sets from school districts, higher education institutions, workforce organizations and social services.” (Challenge)
- “To make full use of this resource, the state needed a high-performing, user-friendly environment where approved researchers could access, share, and work with restricted-use data.” (Challenge)
- “With support from lead partner SunstoneIT, NORC’s Advanced Data Solutions (ADS) team deployed an instance of the NORC Data Enclave tailored to C2C’s needs and ready for an initial group of staff, researchers, and analysts, with room to scale as the program grows.” (Solution)
- “These authorized users can now securely access and analyze C2C’s restricted-use data within the Data Enclave’s high-performance computational infrastructure that also includes a host of available database, statistical, analytical, visualization, and reporting tools.” (Solution)
- “As data are loaded and analysis work begins, the Data Enclave will support the production of approved findings, reports, and analyses” (Result)
Evidence and method
A project description by the vendor of the service. It describes the client’s need, the product and the expected result. It gives no contract value, no user count, no hardware detail and no security certification. The page links to NORC’s product page for the Data Enclave.
Limits
The page does not give the cost, the contract term or how C2C approves researchers. It does not say where the enclave’s computing runs. It says that data loading and analysis are still to begin. Pathways to College in California is a C2C data story from the same data system.