Overview of the tasks of the FDZ-RV

The Research Data Centre (FDZ) was founded at the recommendation of the Commission on the Improvement of Information Instructure between Science and Statistics (KVI). This commission develops approaches towards sustainable research infrastructure. The FDZ was created in 2004 and established at two sites of the German Pension Insurance in Berlin and Würzburg. Before the FDZ-RV was founded, the pension insurance institutions limited themselves to providing data on insurance histories, pension amounts and on other topics in aggregated form, for example as tables or time series. 

Although more differentiated statistics were available to researchers, there was a lack of access to detailed micro-data. During the first five years, development was supported by funds from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (MBBF) as well as the Pension Research Network (Forschungsnetzwerk Alterssicherung – FNA). Since then, funding has been provided by the German Pension Insurance. 

Today we are able to offer scientists and researchers a broad range of datasets. We provide more than 150 datasets in different thematic areas on insurance, pensions and rehabilitation. Our datasets are prepared for standard analysis programs such as SPSS, Stata, R and Python, enabling flexible and precise analysis. We take international standards into account. For example, we work according to the FAIR principle. This ensures that our data is easy to find, accessible, interoperable and reusable for science and research. Our data service is complemented by comprehensive documentation and pertinent literature. 

Our goal is to keep improving access to research data and continuously expand the provision of data. We are working on developing cooperation and promoting networking with other research data centres, scientific institutes and researchers.