The State-Federal Program of Vocational Rehabilitation provides individualized vocational rehabilitation services to persons with disabilities to help them attain, maintain, or regain employment. In the course of providing these services, State Rehabilitation Agencies maintain case records on all of the individuals requesting services under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as amended. In an effort to improve program evaluation through the exchange of statistical information, the Department of Education's Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) have established a Data Link. The continuing exchange of RSA-SSA Data was established in law with Section 141 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1992. The merging of records of these two agencies has advanced the understanding of the rehabilitation experience of disabled persons by providing their employment, earnings, and beneficiary history following the receipt of services through the State-Federal Program of Vocational Rehabilitation.

The RSA-SSA Data Link allows researchers to examine key issues regarding rehabilitation, including whether or not rehabilitated persons remain employed and for how long; the earnings of rehabilitated persons in the years following case closure; how earnings of rehabilitated persons compare to those of persons who could not be rehabilitated or who were not accepted for rehabilitation services; how well severely disabled individuals responded to their rehabilitation experience compared to their non-severely disabled counterparts; how frequently rehabilitated persons become publicly supported; whether or not rehabilitated persons are less likely to require public support than individuals who could not be rehabilitated or were not accepted for rehabilitation services; and the work histories of disabled persons in the years prior to their rehabilitative experience.