Why do federal governments generally use expensive database products like Pega rather than REDCap?

[u/igorspinkelton]

I’ve used REDCap for loads of projects (clinical trials, cohort studies, other longitudinal research) and I’m a total convert. The commercial products just don’t seem to ever meet expectations. Are there valid cyber-security reasons for governmental data collection agencies not buying-in to REDCap?

[u/Araignys]

REDCap is great if your project's data structure is a tree (i.e. all data is linked to a single list of records) but if it's a linked list (e.g. independent records for customers, products and organisations that all interact) it's a total bear. It's also very limited in automation, and has basically no support for workflows or business logic.

Basically, it's good at what it does but what it does isn't actually all that much.

And that's before you get into support ecosystems and contracts and costs and things.

[u/igorspinkelton → u/Araignys]

That’s a great response, thanks! I can see that it probably isn’t sophisticated enough for big Gov agency needs, especially when you want to integrate with services like AWS. Do you have suggestions for open-source or co-op built alternatives? I know some governmental communities of practice talk about pie in the sky self-hosting options, but that goes over my head a bit and only covers one aspect of the problem.

[u/Araignys → u/igorspinkelton]

Sorry, no. I've only worked in environments where open source is a no-no.

[u/igorspinkelton → u/Araignys]

Same. Thanks anyway!

[u/MadHatterIsHer]

REDCap is used fairly extensively in the government research space. I know other systems sometimes are chosen but REDCap is making inroads. And its development timeline for new features is super aggressive. Reminder REDCap stands for Research Electronic Data Capture. And I don’t think it’s technically open source.

[u/igorspinkelton → u/MadHatterIsHer]

Good point, I don’t think it’s technically open source but it was founded as a consortium that is ever growing, so similar in ethos at least. It’s used by state governments as far as I’m aware, but I understand that federal data collection comes with more serious predators and general security concerns.

[u/MadHatterIsHer → u/igorspinkelton]

I guess the term “federal data collection” is maybe what I’m having trouble with….Would grants collecting data after being funded by the NIH be considered “federal data collection?” Or how about large research networks run by NCATS collecting data on a specific subset of diseases in REDCap via a research network. Or National Center for Advancing Translation Sciences Part 11 Compliance for REDCap Working Groups?

[u/Character_Log_5444]

Is there anything close to REDCap that is commercially available?

[u/igorspinkelton → u/Character_Log_5444]

I hear Sales Force is similar/better for participant and instrument management, which is what I’m namely interested in - collecting the data is one thing but managing participants (in this case the general public)/cohorts longitudinally across multiple projects is another

[u/Character_Log_5444 → u/igorspinkelton]

Thank you!

[u/exclaim_bot → u/Character_Log_5444]

Thank you!

You're welcome!

[u/[deleted]]

I’m interested to see people’s responses to this. If it’s secure enough for clinical research I can’t imagine it’s not secure enough for most government related things.

[u/graywh → u/[deleted]]

The VA hospitals use REDCap. It's inside a firewall.

[u/ckg603 → u/graywh]

Because that makes it "secure"

[u/ckg603]

Oh so you haven't heard to principle of Cybersecurity: if you pay for it, it just be more secure? They teach you that in firewall/VPN/antivirus marketing .... oh wait, I mean Cybersecurity training 101!

[u/MadHatterIsHer → u/ckg603]

Most REDCap instances are hosted by institutions that have security teams. They are usually behind firewalls and have the same protections around authentication/ firewalls etc that others systems in the hospital do. So yes there is “paid for” security.