A follow-up to the 2017 report of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policy Making (CEP), which highlighted the difficulties of access for research and public policy evaluation to confidential data from its multiple agencies, pointing out the progress made on these issues by a few countries, including France with the CASD (https://www2.census.gov/adrm/fesac/2017-12-15/Abraham-CEP-final-report.pdf).
After the 2018 amendment to the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA) that frames the U.S. federal statistical system paved the way, the December 9 Memorandum for Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies (link to report) sets up a standard procedure for access requests.
The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the major U.S. data repository, is in charge of the new portal, Research Data Gov, which describes the data held by the various bureaus and agencies, the forms in which it is available, and allows for online submission of a request.
