EXPLORATION AND ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC DATA ASSETS

An explorer user interface allows users that are interested in making purpose-based access requests to datasets to view aggregated and/or summary data regarding available datasets prior to making the purpose-based access request. A guided discovery wizard allows a user to view summarized and/or general information regarding datasets and may provide the user options to filter the datasets based on such information and/or based on parameters of specific data items within the datasets (without exposing the specific data items to the user). Thus, the user may filter the datasets to determine a cohort of datasets including data items that are interesting or useful for the specific purpose. The system may provide access to a subset of filtered datasets for the specific purpose in a self-contained, dedicated-purpose directory (an "investigation workspace") that includes only the precise portion of data that is needed for the requested purpose.