The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 made a substantial new investment to build capacity for the use of electronic clinical data (e.g., distributed data networks or patient registries) for QI and research. ARRA-funded infrastructure awards focus on developing data, methods, training, and governance that is sustainable, flexible, and extensible over time. This brief examines the current requirements and approaches to building electronic data infrastructure, which is important when considering the mechanisms to ensure the sustainability of evidence generation in a learning health system.