The Department has
established a Privacy Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) which serves as a
one‐stop resource for the P‐20 education community on privacy,
confidentiality and data security. PTAC is a resource for State educational
agencies (SEAs), LEAs, the postsecondary community and other parties engaged
in building and using education data systems. It is based out of the National
Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and its work is overseen by the
Privacy Advisory Committee, which, in addition to the Chief Privacy Officer
is comprised of senior leadership from other areas of the Department, such as
NCES, the Office of the Chief Information Officer, the Family Policy
Compliance Office, the Office of the General Counsel, and the Office of
Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. |
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PTAC’s role is to
provide timely and accurate information and guidance about data privacy,
confidentiality, and security issues and practices in education; disseminate
this information to the field and the public; and provide technical
assistance to key stakeholders. |
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A “Privacy
Toolkit” – The toolkit will include a list of FAQs; a library of
commonly‐cited resources related to data privacy, confidentiality and
security; checklists of important items to include in data governance plans
and data security plans; FERPA guidance developed by the Family Policy
Compliance Office; SLDS Technical Briefs (discussed below); and short issue
briefs on key privacy topics. The toolkit will be available online as well as
distributed at conferences and through mailed thumb drives. This toolkit will
be the cornerstone of the information that PTAC will provide to education
agencies to use in developing a roadmap to ensure better safeguarding of
information, that data are used responsibly and that all who have access to
it are held accountable for its proper use and security. |
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Help Desk – The
PTAC help desk is a centralized location for education stakeholders to submit
questions to the Department on privacy, confidentiality and data security
issues. The process for submitting questions to PTAC involves calling a
toll‐free number, emailing or mailing a question. |
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