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Private Lives and Public Policies Confidentiality and Accessibility of Government Statistics (1993) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Pages 1-14

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From page 1...
... STUDY GOALS AND SCOPE Deciding on the exact scope of our investigation was not easy, for the federal statistical system is complex and far reaching, and its boundaries are not clearly defined. More than 70 federal agencies have a role in collecting data from individuals, households, farms, businesses, and governmental bodies and disseminating those data for a variety of statistical purposes.
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From page 2...
... Finally, the data subjects and units of analysis for statistical programs include persons and organizations, but when the concepts of privacy and confidentiality are applied to organizations, they have quite different meanings than they do when applied to persons. Given the complexity of the federal statistical system, designing an ideal configuration to address confidentiality and data access issues throughout the system, or even in any one federal statistical agency, was too daunting for this panel.
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From page 3...
... Protection of individual autonomy is a fundamental attribute of a democracy. If excessive surveillance is used to build data bases, if data are unwittingly dispersed, or if those who capture data for administrative purposes make that information available in personally identifiable form, individual autonomy is compromised.
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From page 4...
... Those data collected exclusively for statistical and research purposes form a tiny fraction of the total. Data collected for administrative purposes are often useful and appropriate for statistical purposes, as when patterns of Food Stamp applications are used to trace the effects
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From page 5...
... These ideas are summarized in the concept of functional separat~on: Data collected for research or statistical purposes should not be made available for administrative action about a particular data subject. This concept was enunciated in a recommendation of the Privacy Protection Study Commission {1977a:5741: That the Congress provide by statute that no record or information contained therein collected or maintained for a research or statistical purpose under Federal authority or with Federal funds may be used in individually identifiable form to make any decision or take any action directly affecting the individual to whom the record pertains, except within the context of the research plan or protocol, or with the specific authorization of such individual.
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From page 6...
... be available for sharing of explicitly or potentially identifiable personal data among federal agencies for statistical and research purposes, provided the confidentiality of the records can be properly protected and the data cannot be used to make determinations about individual data subjects. Greater access should be permitted to key statistical and administrative data sets for the development of sampling frames and other statistical uses.
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From page 7...
... Recommendation 4.2 Federal statistical agencies should seek to improve the access of external users to statistical data, through both legislation and the development and greater use, under carefully controlled conditions, of tested administrative procedures. The panel believes that, through a combination of legislation and administrative procedures, this can be done without sacrificing confidentiality protections for data subjects and data providers.
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From page 8...
... For these and other reasons, statistical agencies are finding it more difficult to persuade persons and organizations to participate in statistical surveys, whether voluntary or mandatory. Ethics and law demand that data providers be told about the conditions under which they are asked to supply information that will be used for statistical and research purposes.
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From page 9...
... How do their reactions vary by race-ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status? Recommendation 3.4 Statistical agencies should undertake and support continuing research, using the tools of cognitive and survey research, to monitor the views of data providers and the general public on informed consent, response burden, sensitivity of survey questions, data sharing for statistical purposes, and related issues.
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From page 10...
... Every federal statistical agency should develop standards and procedures for the application of effective statistical disclosure limitation techniques to all forms of data dissemination, taking ~ r ~ ~ ~ advantage of relevant features of standards and procedures that have worked well for other agencies. Particular care should be taken in the review of proposals for the release of new public-use microdata files.
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From page 11...
... Recommendation 6.1 The Office of Management and Budget's Statistical Policy Office should continue to coordinate research work on statistical disclosure analysis and should disseminate the results of this work broadly among statistical agencies. Major statistical agencies should actively encourage and participate in scholarly statistical research in this area.
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From page 12...
... Recommendation 8.1 Each federal statistical agency should review its staffing and management of confidentiality and data access functions, with particular attention to the assignment within the agency of responsibilities for these functions and the background and experience neecled for persons who exercise these responsibilities. Recommendation 8.2 Statistical agencies should take steps to provide staff training in fair information practices, informed consent procedures, confidentiality laws and policies, statistical disclosure limitation procedures, ant!
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From page 13...
... EXE C UTIVE S UMMAR Y Recommendation 8.5 The panel supports the general concept of an independent federal advisory body charged with fostering a climate of enhanced protection for all federal data about persons and responsible data dissemination for research and statistical purposes. Any such advisory body should promote the principle of functional separation and have professional staff with expertise in privacy protection, computer data bases, official statistics, and research uses of federal data.
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Key Terms

  • federal statistical
  • statistical disclosure
  • disclosure limitation
  • statistical purposes
  • data access

  • limitation techniques
  • data providers
  • statistical data
  • data sharing
  • research purposes

  • data subjects
  • statistical agency
  • access functions
  • data protection
  • functional separation

  • individually identifiable
  • democratic accountability
  • individual autonomy
  • statistical policy
  • informed consent

  • microdata files
  • data users
  • administrative purposes
  • consistent set
  • constitutional empowerment

  • coordinate research
  • policy office
  • administrative procedures
  • privacy protection
  • data accessed


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