Daniel Beckler United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service Timothy Mulcahy NORC at the University of Chicago Topic (ix): Statistical disclosure limitation for table and analysis servers: how to make outputs of modern data access infrastructures safe Slide 1Slide Slide 1 UNECE/Eurostat Work Session on Statistical Data Confidentiality Tarragona, Spain October 2011 DATA UTILITY, CONFIDENTIALITY, AND THE PRODUCTION-POSSIBILITY FRONTIER: STRIKING A DELICATE BALANCE

Overview of Microdata Dissemination Techniques  Public Use Files  Online Statistical Data Cubes and Tabulation Engines  Remote Batch Processing  Synthetic Microdata  Remote and Physical Data Enclaves Slide 1Slide Slide 2  With these methods, there is a trade-off between disclosure risk, the amount of analytic utility, and the ease of access. UNECE/Eurostat Work Session on Statistical Data Confidentiality Tarragona, Spain October 2011

National Agricultural Statistics Service  United States Department of Agriculture  Conducts censuses & surveys on U.S.’s farm population.  Generates official USDA agricultural statistics, many impact global commodity markets  Paper discusses how NASS protects the confidentiality of microdata, while providing as much analytical utility as possible to the users of the official statistics as well as researchers. Slide 1Slide Slide 3 UNECE/Eurostat Work Session on Statistical Data Confidentiality Tarragona, Spain October 2011

United States Census of Agriculture  Conducted every 5 years. Produces very detailed data at the U.S., state, and county (i.e., sub-state) levels.  Data for individual agricultural operations are protected from disclosure in published totals by using a threshold rule and a dominance rule  Primary suppressions result directly from these rules  Complementary suppressions are then determined to ensure primary suppressions may not be calculated from published data. Slide 1Slide Slide 4 UNECE/Eurostat Work Session on Statistical Data Confidentiality Tarragona, Spain October 2011

United States Census of Agriculture  Loss of utility of the Census due to suppressions: Slide 1Slide Slide 5 UNECE/Eurostat Work Session on Statistical Data Confidentiality Tarragona, Spain October 2011 Domain Overall Count of Estimates Number of Primary Suppressions Number of Complementary Suppressions Total Number of Suppressions Total Suppressions as % of Estimates US29, State –Low %61,0008,6142,72111, State – High %16,0955,1112,1957, All (US & State)2,556,586430,843151,506582,