Announcement of an Exempt Purchase

Implement and host the University of Illinois Chicago Illinois Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act IGA Study Virtual Data Enclave within the NORC Data Enclave.

This purchase is exempt from the usual selection processes of the Procurement Code because the procurement expenditure is for performing sponsored research and other sponsored activities under grants and contracts funded by the sponsor or by sources other than State appropriations. (30 ILCS 500 / 1-13(b)(8)) We are working with NORC on this funded project in other capacities including programming and data analysis under a separate subcontract. It made sense to house the data with NORC given their ongoing involvement in the project. We did have multiple meetings to discuss the services that would be provided and we also tried to find a secured platform at UIC that would meet project data storage and access needs but one was not available. Given our working relationship with NORC, they provided the best opportunity to securely host the data. We believe this could become a viable option for other investigators at UIC, especially those who work with data that contains private health information such as Medicaid and Medicare.