New Releases
Toward a 21st Century National Data Infrastructure: Managing Privacy and Confidentiality Risks with Blended Data
Protecting privacy and ensuring confidentiality in data is a critical component of modernizing our national data infrastructure. The use of blended data – combining previously collected data sources – presents new considerations for responsible data stewardship. This report provides a framework for managing disclosure risks that accounts for the unique attributes of blended data and poses a series of questions to guide considered decision-making.
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New Interactive Resources
Measuring Law Enforcement Suicide: Challenges and Opportunities
Strengthening the Nation’s Data Infrastructure
An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line.
People in the News
CNSTAT congratulates
Claire McKay Bowen, WSS President Invited Talk Speaker
Claire McKay Bowen, senior fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population and Statistical Methods Group lead at the Urban Institute, gave the WSS President’s Invited Talk on June 25, 2024. Her topic was: Responsibly Represent People in Data: Navigating Data Privacy Challenges in Public Policy. Matt Williams, RTI International, was the discussant. Look for her presentation on the WSS website. She served on the CNSTAT panel that produced Toward a 21st Century National Data Infrastructure: Managing Privacy and Confidentiality Risks with Blended Data (2024).
CNSTAT mourns:
Passing of Don Dillman
Don A. Dillman, Washington State University regents professor emeritus, died on June 14, 2024, at age 82 from cancer. He was internationally recognized as a leading expert in survey methodology, using experimental studies over his 55-year career to establish standards and best practices that changed how researchers around the world conduct surveys. He served as senior survey methodologist for the Census Bureau from 1991–1995 and as a member of CNSTAT from 2014–2020. He served on numerous CNSTAT studies and chaired the CNSTAT panel that produced Measuring What We Spend: Toward a New Consumer Expenditure Survey (2013).
CNSTAT congratulates:
John Abowd, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2023 Policy Award Recipient
John M. Abowd, professor emeritus in economics, Cornell University, and chief scientist, U.S. Census Bureau (retired), received the ACM Policy Award for: “transformative work in modernizing the US Census Bureau’s processing and dissemination of census and survey data, which serves as a model for privacy-aware management of government collected data. Abowd’s work has transformed the government’s capacity to improve the accuracy and availability of vital statistical and data resources, while at the same time, enhancing citizens’ privacy.” He served on CNSTAT from 2010–2016 and chaired the panel that produced Collecting Compensation Data from Employers (2012).
CNSTAT mourns:
Passing of Christopher Edley, Jr.
Christopher (Chris) Edley, Jr., honorable William H. Orrick, Jr., distinguished professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, died on May 10, 2024, at age 71 from complications of surgery. He alternated public service in the Carter and Clinton Administrations with teaching and leadership in academia, as a professor at the Harvard Law School and dean of the Berkeley School of Law. He chaired the CNSTAT panels that produced Monitoring Educational Equity (2019) and Evaluation of the Achievement Levels for Math and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (2017).
CNSTAT congratulates:
Jeri Mulrow. President of the American Statistical Association (ASA) Electee
Jeri Mulrow, vice president, senior statistical fellow, and sector lead for statistics and data science, large surveys, research operations, and field services staff, at Westat, has been elected president of ASA. Her term will begin in January 2026, following a year as president-elect. Prior to coming to Westat in 2019, she served as the principal deputy director for the Bureau of Justice Statistics and deputy division director for the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics at the National Science Foundation. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA), serving on its Board and as the Association’s vice president from 2014-2016.
CNSTAT mourns:
Passing of Ed Sondik
Edward J. Sondik, director of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) (retired), died on June 25, 2024, at age 82 from cancer. An electrical engineer and operations researcher by training, he had a 37-year career in public health, serving as deputy director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Division of Cancer Prevention and Control and as acting director of NCI before becoming director of NCHS in 1996, serving in that position until his retirement in 2013. In a 2012 interview with Amstat News, he said he was proud of NCHS’s staff’s success in significantly reducing the time from data collection to publication and anticipating such data needs as data on exposures to environmental substances and following up patients with heart disease.
CNSTAT congratulates:
Yajuan Si, International Statistical Institute (ISI) Electee
Yajuan Si, research associate professor, Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, recently became an ISI elected member. She received her Ph.D. in statistical science from Duke University and specializes in research on linking design-based and model-based approaches methods for survey inference, missing data analysis, confidentiality protection with synthetic datasets, and causal inference with observational data. She served as a member of the CNSTAT panel that produced Creating an Integrated System of Data and Statistics on Household Income, Consumption, and Wealth: Time to Build (2024).
Also of Interest
Released: The Nation’s Data at Risk: Meeting America’s Information Needs for the 21st Century
The web publication, by the American Statistical Association-George Mason University Project on the Health of the Principal Federal Statistical Agencies, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation was on released July 09, 2024. This inaugural report concludes:
The report has 15 recommendations for Congress, parent agencies, the statistical agencies, and OMB. See this site.