Concerns about Section 203 of the 2013 Bipartisan Budget Agreement which requires
Certification by the Department of Commerce to Access the Death Master File.
Sec. 203 of the Bipartisan Budget Agreement enacted into law December 2013 restricts public
access to the Death Master File (DMF) which is the only viable national death data base. The
DMF has been a major tool to prevent fraud in financial transactions by verifying that the person
applying for credit is not using the identity of a deceased person. Over the last thirty years the
DMF has also been used for time-sensitive research by many non-financial industries including
academia, social and medical researchers, life insurance companies, and professional and
forensic genealogists. The requirements and costs of Certification under Section 203 have
created a financial burden on many of these small business professionals. Those who cannot
afford to become certified have delayed their important work for three years. Those who have
used the new limited data base provided by NTIS, have also found the search engine
inadequate as compared to services previously provided by data aggregators who have more
robust search engines and are able to distribute the data in more searchable formats than the
Department of Commerce. Since the Social Security Number (SSN) is the only part of the DMF
that can lead to identity theft, the best solution is to redact the SSN from the Death Master File
(DMF) for the three year embargo period.
Action Needed: An Amendment to Sec. 203 which states the following:
The Department of Commerce shall release all information included in the Death Master File to
data aggregators upon their request for use in medical, historical, social, and genealogical
research, except that during the embargo period established by paragraph (a) of Section 203 [of
the 2013 Bipartisan Budget Act] the Social Security Number shall not be released.
The Importance of a National Death Database
Because there is no other viable national death database, the Social Security Administration
must be required to release all the other information available including middle name or initial,
the state where the social security number was issued, and the last residence. This information
was discontinued in November 2011 and is necessary to identify the correct individual,
especially if the person being researched has a common name.
Better Ways to Prevent Identity Theft
The Treasury Inspector General Tax Administration (TIGTA) reports for 2011 and 2012 say less
than 2% of all fraudulent tax refunds involved the deceased. Living individuals are the victims of
98% of the tax fraud. What Sec. 203 is designed to achieve, is already being accomplished by
the Internal Revenue Service through the use of filters which detect information inconsistent
with previous returns. We encourage Congress to provide the IRS with sufficient funds to
continue to improve the filters and red flags to prevent the high cost of tax fraud from identity
theft of the deceased and the living.
The Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC), is a national committee sponsored
by the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS), the International Association of Jewish
Genealogical Societies (IAJGS), and the National Genealogical Society (NGS) and supported
by the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG), the Board for Certification of
Genealogists (BCG), the American Society of Genealogists (ASG), and the International
Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists (ICAPGen). For more
information go to http://www.fgs.org/rpac or contact RPAC at access@fgs.org.
February 10, 2016