Ascension LLC is seeking a detail-oriented Data Security / Disclosure Avoidance and Code Documentation Specialist to support the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences evaluation of the next cycle of Regional Educational Laboratories and Comprehensive Centers. This role is designed for a professional who understands secure research data handling, statistical file preparation, code documentation, version control, and disclosure avoidance practices for sensitive education data.

This specialist will help ensure that data files, statistical code, codebooks, documentation, and restricted-use data products are organized, reproducible, secure, and suitable for government review, publication, and potential release through IES’s Restricted Use Data Licensing Program. The role is important because the Statement of Objectives requires data and code supporting analyses to be delivered to the Government, and any data files containing identifying information must be perturbed in accordance with an approved Disclosure Avoidance Plan.

The ideal candidate is highly disciplined, documentation-driven, and comfortable working in a controlled data environment where confidentiality, version control, reproducibility, and compliance are not administrative afterthoughts, but core requirements of the work.

Summary of Contractor Role

The Data Security / Disclosure Avoidance and Code Documentation Specialist will support secure data handling procedures for the evaluation team, including organization of project data files, codebooks, statistical code, naming conventions, version control practices, disclosure avoidance documentation, and preparation of restricted-use data files. The role will coordinate closely with the evaluation lead, quantitative analysts, survey/data collection lead, and project manager to ensure that all data products are complete, traceable, compliant, and ready for IES review.

The Department’s draft SOO states that non-public IES data collected under a pledge of confidentiality must be stored and analyzed on IES’s secure server in a project-specific enclave, and that the IES secure server should also be used for analysis of extant administrative data. The SOO also requires compliance with records management, safeguarding, and non-public information protection requirements, including immediate notification upon discovery of inadvertent or unauthorized disclosures.

This is not envisioned as a senior cybersecurity architect role unless ED adds broader system security responsibilities. Instead, this position is best structured as a technical compliance, secure data handling, disclosure avoidance, and documentation role embedded within the evaluation team.

Anticipated Day-to-Day Activities

The contractor will be expected to:

• Maintain secure data handling procedures for project files, analytic datasets, statistical code, documentation, and supporting materials.
• Support compliance with IES secure server requirements, including use of the approved project-specific enclave for non-public IES data.
• Prepare organized data documentation packages, including file inventories, data dictionaries, codebooks, variable naming conventions, processing notes, and version histories.
• Develop and maintain file naming conventions, folder structures, and version control logs to support reproducibility and auditability.
• Review analytic datasets and supporting documentation to identify potential confidentiality, disclosure, or re-identification risks.
• Support preparation of Disclosure Avoidance Plan inputs, including identification of direct identifiers, indirect identifiers, sensitive variables, perturbation needs, suppression rules, masking strategies, or aggregation requirements.
• Coordinate with statisticians and analysts to ensure that disclosure avoidance steps do not compromise analytic validity or interpretation.
• Document data transformations, recoding decisions, cleaning rules, derived variables, and analytic file preparation steps.
• Validate that statistical code aligns with final analytic files, technical reports, tables, exhibits, and appendices.
• Track data sources, data refreshes, file versions, analytic outputs, and final deliverable packages.
• Assist with preparing data and statistical code for Government delivery at the conclusion of the project.
• Support restricted-use data file preparation, ensuring that identifying information is treated in accordance with approved disclosure avoidance procedures.
• Apply quality control checks to confirm that files delivered to IES are complete, readable, well-documented, and organized for future use.
• Maintain documentation necessary to support Federal records management expectations, including metadata and technical documentation needed for the Government to understand and use records and data.
• Flag potential data security, disclosure, version control, or documentation risks to the Project Director and evaluation leadership.
• Ensure AI/data-use restrictions are followed, including prohibition on using IES data, inputs, or outputs to train, fine-tune, improve, or update machine learning models or AI systems.