Proceedings from the 2016 NSF–Sloan Workshop on Practical Privacy

On October 14, 2016, we hosted a workshop that brought together economists, survey statisticians, and computer scientists with expertise in the field of privacy preserving methods: Census Bureau staff working on implementing cutting-edge methods in the Bureau’s flagship public-use products mingled with academic researchers from a variety of universities. The four products discussed as part of the workshop were 1. the American Community Survey (ACS); 2. Longitudinal Employer-Household Data (LEHD), in particular the LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES); the 3. 2020 Decennial Census; and the 4. 2017 Economic Census. The goal of the workshop was to 1. Discuss the specific challenges that have arisen in ongoing efforts to apply formal privacy models to Census data products by drawing together expertise of academic and governmental researchers 2. Produce short written memos that summarize concrete suggestions for practical applications to specific Census Bureau priority areas.Funding for the workshop was provided by the National Science Foundation (CNS-1012593) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Organizational support was provided by the Research and Methodology Directorate at the U.S. Census Bureau and the Labor Dynamics Institute at Cornell University