11.016, Statistical, Research, and Methodology Assistance | CENSUS RMD RMDPO 2021 2006906

Opportunity Information: Apply for CENSUS RMD RMDPO 2021 2006906

This grant opportunity (CFDA 11.016) is a discretionary cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau, focused on advancing the science and practice of record linkage and entity resolution. In practical terms, the Census Bureau is looking to fund research that helps it more accurately measure the U.S. population and the U.S. economy by improving the way it matches and reconciles records that refer to the same real-world entity across different data sources. The work is aimed at strengthening a production-scale system, meaning a system intended for ongoing operational use rather than a one-off research prototype, and at expanding the range of populations that system can cover while also improving the accuracy and reliability of the linkages it produces.

A core theme of the opportunity is expanding population coverage and improving linkage quality for multiple kinds of entities. The announcement explicitly includes humans and households, but also businesses and other entity types, which signals that the Census Bureau is interested in methods that generalize across domains rather than solutions tailored to only one dataset or one type of unit. The goal is not just to link more records, but to do it in a way that is measurable, defensible, and improves official statistics by reducing missed links (false negatives), incorrect links (false positives), and inconsistencies that can distort downstream analyses.

The funding notice highlights two program priorities. The first priority is “Improvement of Methodology Related to Record Linkage, Entity Resolution and Evaluation Thereof.” This covers the statistical and methodological side of the problem: developing or refining matching strategies, improving model-based or rules-based linkage approaches, handling messy identifiers and inconsistent attributes, addressing bias and differential error across subpopulations, and building stronger evaluation frameworks. Evaluation is called out directly, which matters because record linkage quality is not always obvious without careful ground-truthing strategies, error estimation, and performance metrics that reflect the real use case. Work under this priority would likely include methods for estimating linkage error, designing validation studies, assessing uncertainty propagation into published estimates, and improving how linkage decisions are made when data quality varies across sources or groups.

The second priority is “Development and Improvement of the Technology for Entity Resolution and Record Linkage.” This is the engineering and implementation side, oriented toward tools, systems, and scalable infrastructure that can operate at Census-scale. Technology development in this context commonly involves building or enhancing pipelines for data standardization, blocking and indexing methods for efficient candidate pair generation, privacy-preserving or secure linkage capabilities, scalable computation, reproducible workflows, and software that can be maintained and integrated into existing production environments. It can also include improvements that make linkage systems faster, more robust, easier to monitor, and easier to adapt to new datasets or entity types without redoing everything from scratch.

Even though the notice says these two priorities should proceed simultaneously, it also clarifies that an awardee does not have to take on both priorities. That means applicants can propose a project that is primarily methodological (for example, new evaluation techniques or bias-reduction methods) or primarily technological (for example, a scalable entity resolution framework), as long as it aligns with the overarching objective of improving and expanding a production record linkage and entity resolution system. The “cooperative agreement” instrument type also implies substantial involvement by the Census Bureau during the project, such as coordination on research direction, access to expertise, integration considerations, and iterative feedback, rather than the agency simply issuing funds and stepping back.

In terms of basic funding details provided, the opportunity was created on May 4, 2021, with an original closing date of June 4, 2021. The award ceiling is listed as $6,000,000, and the Census Bureau anticipated making one award. Eligibility is described broadly as “Others,” with additional clarification referenced in the full notice, which typically means eligibility may extend beyond standard categories and could include specific types of organizations depending on the text of the Notice of Funding Opportunity. The activity category is listed under research and development, reflecting that the intent is to produce usable advances in methods and/or systems that strengthen official measurement of population and economic activity through better linkage and entity resolution.

• The Department of Commerce in the environment, natural resources, science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "11.016, Statistical, Research, and Methodology Assistance" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 11.016.
• This funding opportunity was created on May 04, 2021.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jun 04, 2021. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $6,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for CENSUS RMD RMDPO 2021 2006906

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