The Harvard-MIT Data Center (HMDC) provides multi-disciplinary information technology support for social science research and education at Harvard and MIT.
Established in the early 1960s the HMDC was meant to be the original data center for political and social science at Harvard University, and over time it has evolved into an information technology service provider that transcends many educational fields.
In the early days associates of the Government Data Center were responsible for managing the distribution of ICPSR tapes housed in Harvard's Office of Information Technology.
In the early 1990s associates of the Harvard Data Center played a major role in a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that established a research training program in political economy for various educational institutions.
In 1999 HMDC associates were awarded a multimillion-dollar grant by the NSF and five other funding agencies to create an open-source, digital library for quantitative research data; associates of the facility continue to receive additional grants and funding support from vendors, such as the NSF and the Library of Congress, to continue their research and development projects.