Statistical Disclosure Control

Contact:

Peter-Paul de Wolf
Statistics Netherlands
P.O. Box 24500
2490 HA The Hague
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 70 337 5060
Last update: 10 Oct 2011

CENEX results

  • The CENEX project has been completed now. All the results are available.
  • The report on the inventory is available
  • The handbook is available now
  • New versions of µ-ARGUS and τ-ARGUS are available
  • The CENEX-Conference has been held in Rome. Proceedings are available

CENEX introduction

In the recent period much progress has been made in the field of Statistical Disclosure Control thanks to the efforts of the CASC project. This project has led to many methodological research papers and the development of the ARGUS twins, software for the SDC of both microdata and tabular data. However this field is in continuous development. The traditional balance between the need to know and the privacy of the respondents has to be taken care of. On the one hand side the general public, policy makers etc. need more and more information and researchers have an increasing interest in our valuable datasets. And they need to be able to perform the complex analysis as quickly as possible, using powerful analyses packages at their disposal. More and more requests are made for remote access facilities, a great challenge for the next few years.

But the privacy of the data suppliers must be guaranteed. Modern intruders have more and more powerful PC and more and more powerful software, so they can try to breach the privacy of our respondents. The cooperation of the respondents is one of the most valuable assets of an NSI.

Summary

In this CENEX we propose to investigate the current situation in Europe with respect to the application of SDC-methods. We plan to conduct a short survey and study the situation in a few selected countries in more depth.

Secondly we will try to propose guidelines for the application of SDC-methods in practice. These guidelines will be based on the outcome of the previous survey, but also be based on the experiences of the participating countries. We have included the countries that are most active in the field of SDC in this CENEX.

The development of the ARGUS twins has been one of the most visible outcomes of the CASC project. They are being used already in several European countries. Via the survey we will also try to investigate which practical obstacles there still exist in the EU-countries to apply these methods. The ARGUS software is and will never be a black box that will guarantee the production of safe statistical data without the expertise of a subject matter SDC-specialist. So one the one hand side we must investigate the practical obstacles (different production tools/production software, etc), but also we must educate researchers in the NSI’s in the field of SDC. So we will also teach a course on SDC during this CENEX. To further raise the awareness of SDC, a concluding conference at the end of this CENEX is planned.

At the end of this CENEX we will compose a list of topics that will need our attention in the years after this CENEX.