CII Benchmarking & Metrics

Confidentiality Policy and Procedures

Company data submitted to CII for benchmarking are considered “Company Confidential” and CII will implement procedures as directed by its Benchmarking & Metrics Committee (BM&M) to minimize the risk of compromising these data. Reports containing only individual project data or individual company aggregated data are considered confidential and will not be published by CII or used to support research activities, conferences or other such gatherings without the expressed permission of the CII Board representative from the company. Statistical summaries of aggregated data will be used to establish norms for performance and practice use and to establish the value expected from the use of best practices. Data can also be used to support CII and other sponsored research providing that the confidentiality of companies that have submitted data is maintained. Data used for benchmarking studies and in support of research activities will in all cases abide by rules established by the CII Benchmarking Committee to protect the confidentiality of benchmarking participants. Specifically, data published must reflect the aggregate of at least 10 (8 for pharma) projects and must have been submitted by at least 3 separate companies.

Access to confidential benchmarking data is limited to essential CII staff and graduate students working for the staff. All personnel having access to confidential data will sign a confidentially agreement provided by CII acknowledging the confidential nature of the data and agreeing to comply with guidelines established by the CII Benchmarking Committee.

The following guidelines govern the use of data provided in support of research activities: 1) confidential company and project identifiers will be stripped from data sets before release to research teams, 2) only the minimum subset of data essential to support the research will be released, 3) everyone having access to the data will execute a CII provided confidentiality agreement before receiving access, 4) upon completion of the research, the data, to include all copies, will be destroyed and a certificate of destruction will be provided to CII, 5) activities using CII benchmarking data will publish only aggregated data in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 2 above and a courtesy draft will be provided for comment to the CII Associate Director for Benchmarking prior to publication.

Exceptions to these rules may be made on a case by case basis such as for the sharing of data between two companies to accommodate alliance partnerships. When such cases arise, CII will obtain the expressed permission of each CII Board representative and will implement custom confidentiality agreements as appropriate.

The CII Benchmarking & Metrics Committee will review these procedures periodically to address changes and to ensure they remain current with the best interest of member companies and other companies benchmarking with CII.