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A nonintegrated analytical environment, such as the PDE, impedes the efficient operation of a RAND FFRDC study relative to existing arrangements by eliminating the alignment of incentives between researcher and analytical environment.

• The additional burdens imposed by the PDE process require delays and regulatory burden that do not improve the final research product. These additional costs could be outweighed by benefits from efficiencies or data safeguarding; however, the authors find limited evidence of realized efficiencies in the research process or improvements in data safeguarding relative to existing, required RAND FFRDC processes.

The PDE could serve as an alternative analytical environment for studies and analyses instead of as a single centralized environment.

• A single centralized analytical environment for research processes within DoD has the potential to reduce analytical capacity and discourage researchers from accumulating database-specific knowledge.
• The PDE represents a potential opportunity for DoD to engage academic researchers outside of existing research support organizations with recurring DoD sponsor relationships.
• The addition of the PDE as an alternative environment (i.e., a complement) instead of as a substitute strengthens DoD's analytical capacity.

The objectives of the study described in this report are to determine whether the RAND Corporation's federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) can effectively and efficiently use the Person-Event Data Environment (PDE) to support manpower and personnel research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), to assess how using the PDE compares with existing approaches to accessing defense manpower data, and to identify what improvements to the PDE would be necessary for it to be used by RAND's FFRDCs for personnel research. The researchers' approach for assessing the PDE was to (1) identify the data collection and analytical requirements from three in-progress or completed RAND studies typical of manpower and personnel studies conducted in RAND's DoD FFRDCs and (2) replicate the data collection and analysis using the PDE.

The researchers conclude that a nonintegrated analytical environment, such as the PDE, impedes the efficient operation of a RAND FFRDC study relative to existing arrangements by eliminating the alignment of incentives between researcher and analytical environment. Furthermore, a single centralized analytical environment for research processes within DoD has the potential to reduce analytical capacity and discourage researchers from accumulating database-specific knowledge. However, the addition of the PDE as an alternative environment (i.e., a complement) instead of as a substitute strengthens DoD's analytical capacity. In addition, it represents a potential opportunity for DoD research sponsors to engage academic researchers outside of existing research support organizations with recurring DoD sponsor relationships by providing them a secure analytical environment for analysis.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Conceptual Framework for a Study

• Chapter Three

  General Requirements and Steps of a RAND FFRDC Study

• Chapter Four

  Comparison of Study Steps Across Environments

• Chapter Five

  Summary and Conclusions

• Appendix

  Recommended Changes to the PDE