All of Us Researcher Workbench Account Management Policy

Background

The All of Us Research Program is committed to protecting participant privacy while facilitating biomedical research by creating a secure platform for researchers to conduct their analysis. Only authorized data users are permitted access to the data and analysis must be done using the Researcher Workbench platform. When registering for the Researcher Workbench, authorized data users create an @researchallofus.org google account that is used to log in to the Researcher Workbench. They are then required to complete several registration steps, including affiliating with an institution who has completed a Data Use and Registration Agreement (DURA), identity verification, responsible conduct of research training, and signing the Data User Code of Conduct.

Rules and analysis

All of Us has implemented measures to ensure that institutions can review authorized data users accessing participant data through their DURA. In addition, the program provides oversight to ensure users are in compliance with program policies. To facilitate these oversight measures, researchers are only permitted to create one Researcher Workbench account per institutional email address to access participant data. Researchers are not restricted in the number of research projects they can undertake in an account. Therefore, limiting authorized data users to one account promotes oversight activities while not constraining research activity for the user.

Furthermore, All of Us utilizes rigorous security practices to help ensure data are protected. To maintain NIST 800-53 security standards, the authorized data user’s researchallofus.org account is not to be used as a login ID for unauthorized third-party sites.

Policy statement

Under this policy, authorized data users are only allowed to create one Researcher Workbench account per institutional email address. If authorized data users have a change in their institutional affiliation, they can work with the Research Support team to update the institutional affiliation in their existing account. In addition, issues with a user’s account, such as login troubles, registration step completion, and account disablement, should be resolved in coordination with the Researcher Workbench Support team.

In addition, an @researchallofus.org account cannot be used for the following purposes:

• Use of social media, social networking sites, and external sites/applications
• Posting information on public websites; and
• Use of organization-provided identifiers (e.g., researchallofus.org email addresses) and authentication secrets (e.g., passwords) for creating accounts on external sites/applications.

Login to such third party websites by way of an assigned Researcher Workbench account are disabled as of Wednesday, July 23rd.