Table 1: Comparing Administrative Data Access in Three Canadian Provinces.

	British Columbia	Alberta	Manitoba
Data Steward	PopData B.C.	Alberta Health and Alberta Health Services	Manitoba Centre for Health Policy
Feasibility Assessment and Cost Estimate	As part of a feasibility assessment, PopData provides a cost estimate for the data extract.	n/a	As part of a feasibility assessment, MCHP provides a cost estimate for the analysis work to be completed by in-house analysts.
Data Access Accreditation	All researchers must complete an online data privacy training module.	n/a	All individuals requesting linelevel access to the data complete an accreditation session.
Data Access Request, Ethics Approval and Other Permissions	Data access request is submitted to PopData through a Researcher Liaison for review; must be approved by the appropriate data steward(s). Research ethics approval is obtained from an accredited Research Ethics Board in B.C.	Data access request is submitted to Alberta SPOR Support Data Platform. Research ethics approval is obtained from University of Calgary or University of Alberta.	Data access request is submitted to and reviewed by the Health Information Privacy Committee (HIPC). Research ethics approval is obtained from University of Manitoba. Permission to use data is obtained from data providers.
Data Extraction and Analysis	PopData prepares the data extract using a common study ID to enable researchers to link data sets. The data extract is most often made available to researchers within the secure PopData virtual research environment.	Alberta Health/AHS releases the linked and de-identified data extract to the researcher via secure file transfer in accordance with the ethics agreement.	Access to the de-identified data is provided to accredited analysts in the secure MCHP environment or through a remote access site. Linkage of the requested datasets is then performed on a temporary project-by-project basis.