The Illinois Longitudinal Data System (ILDS) provides the governance and technical systems that support the integration of longitudinal data across participating Illinois state agencies. Focusing on the cradle to career spectrum, the ILDS:
- aligns and coordinates agency data and research priorities;
- enables the secure and efficient linkage of individual-level data across selected agency data sets via its Master Client Index (MCI); and
- facilitates the access and use of agency data by researchers and other external parties.
Our Role
EdSystems supports the governance of the ILDS, and our team has played a lead role in laying the legal foundation and securing the funding necessary to support the system from its outset. We partner both with participating state agencies in identifying inter-agency priorities and projects and with the Centralized Demographic Dataset Administrator, an NIU-based entity that maintains the MCI. We also liaise with researchers and other prospective data users interested in requesting agencies’ individual-level data.
