The North Carolina State Data Center is a partnership between the state and the US Census Bureau to support data use for everyone. North Carolina was one of the first states to join the SDC partnership in 1978. The 45 NC SDC affiliate agencies are located across the state, from the mountains to the coast, providing support of US Census and state and local data. NC SDC affiliates also apply their knowledge of local data with Census and other data to create value-added data resources.

Data Requests

Meeting the need of local data users is the core purpose of the NC SDC. Assessing data need is helpful for developing data tools and products. NC SDC affiliates report the number of data request handled each year by the following major client types:

• Government
• Business
• Academic or Research Organizations
• Community-Based Organizations/Non-Profit Organizations
• Private Citizen
• Media
• Other

Data Support

The US Census Bureau alone produces huge amounts of data, and it is easy for data users to be confused by data concepts. NC SDC affiliates work with data users to understand and apply data appropriately. Data support involves consulting with data users to clarify the data need and locate the best data product, technical assistance in using different data tools, informing users of data concepts to ensure accurate analysis, and more.

Data support also includes applying programming and technical skills to to localize federal, state, and local data and provide value-added data resources. These resources may be websites, newsletters, factsheets, data tools, or more.

Data support tasks taking more than 20 minutes and extensive or customized programming tasks are reported by NC SDC Affiliates.