(a) General. The Privacy Act allows us to disclose information maintained in a system of records without your consent to any other party if such disclosure is pursuant to a routine use published in the system's notice of system of records. A “Routine use” must be compatible with the purpose for which SSA collected the information.

(b) Notice of routine use disclosures. A list of permissible routine use disclosures is included in every system of records notice published in the Federal Register.

(c) Determining compatibility—(1) Disclosure to carry out SSA programs. We disclose information for published routine uses necessary to carry out SSA's programs.

(2) Disclosure to carry out programs similar to SSA programs. We may disclose information for the administration of other government programs. These disclosures are pursuant to published routine uses where the use is compatible with the purpose for which the information was collected. These programs generally meet the following conditions:

(i) The program is clearly identifiable as a Federal, State, or local government program.

(ii) The information requested concerns eligibility, benefit amounts, or other matters of benefit status in a Social Security program and is relevant to determining the same matters in the other program. For example, we disclose information to the Railroad Retirement Board for pension and unemployment compensation programs, to the Department of Veterans Affairs for its benefit programs, to worker's compensation programs, to State general assistance programs and to other income maintenance programs at all levels of government. We also disclose for health maintenance programs like Medicaid and Medicare.

(iii) The information will be used for appropriate epidemiological or similar research purposes.