IOF Webinar: Advancing Demographic Equity with Privacy Preserving Methodologies: Current Challenges and Potential Future Work

[Please Note: This session has already occurred.  Go to the News Story for this event to read about what happened.]

NISS is putting together a new Ingram Olkin Forum on Advancing Demographic Equity with Privacy Preserving Methodology! This forum will first be introduced as an online webinar on November 1, 2022 at 12pm - 1:30pm ET.

This webinar acts as an introduction to the in-person two-day NISS IOF workshop in the Washington DC area in January 2023. From this workshop, we will summarize the current challenges and future directions of this collaborative research and practice area in a white paper and / or manuscript. Working groups will be formed and expected to continue after the workshop. To generate a broader participation for the workshop, we are planning on a pre-workshop, 1.5-hour webinar on November 1, 2022 with four panelists from academia, government, NGOs/Think Tanks, and data users/practitioners on “Current Challenges and Potential Future Work” around the workshop theme of Advancing Demographic Equity with Privacy Preserving Methodologies.

Panelists:

Motivation of this Ingram Olkin Forum:

On his first day in office, President Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies and White House offices to examine barriers to underrepresented individuals and initiated several efforts to address equity for people of color and underserved communities. The executive order takes an unprecedented step by committing the government to actively pursuing more equitable engagement and outcomes across all agencies and policy areas.

However, many statistical agencies do not collect or release detailed demographic data and statistics due to growing concerns about disclosure risks. For instance, people of color with low incomes are more susceptible to privacy attacks because of their higher reliance on smartphones for internet access and how much personal information they give up for free cell phone app services. Such information collection makes them more easily identifiable, especially if they are outliers in small geographies.

To address these issues, some propose agencies to review and update their privacy protection methodologies with more modern data privacy and confidentiality techniques. However, as evident in the political discussions surrounding the 2020 Census, there is a lack of communication among policymakers, privacy researchers, and data practitioners about what privacy-preserving measures should be taken and their implications. This situation stagnated the conversation on improving access to more detailed demographic data.

Dissemination / Expected Output

NISS will host a two-day workshop in January 2023 to improve and strengthen the relationships among the privacy experts, researchers (e.g., social scientists, economists, and demographers), data stewards, data practitioners, and public policymakers. During the workshop, we hope to bridge the communication gap and identify what tools and educational materials are needed to improve expanding access to confidential demographic data for better public policy decision-making. In addition to connecting statisticians to public policymakers, we will write a white paper and / or manuscript suitable for journals such as Statistics and Public Policy on lessons learned and next steps that the data privacy and confidentiality community should take to move the conversation forward.

Component I: 1.5-hour webinar on November 1, 2022.
Component II: 2-day workshop on January 12-13, 2023.
Component III: White paper / manuscript by August 2023.

During the workshop on January 12-13, 2023 we have planned 6 sessions with topics of statistical data privacy methods (synthetic data and differential privacy), challenges faced at federal statistical agencies and data users, applications and use cases, public policy and privacy law, and funding opportunities. Working roundtables are scheduled throughout the two-day workshop to facilitate close collaboration among participants that will continue after the workshop. In addition to connecting statisticians to public  policymakers, we will write a white paper and / or manuscript suitable for journals, such as the Journal on Statistics and Public Policy, about the lessons learned and next steps that the data privacy and confidentiality community should take to move the conversation forward. This IOF is generously sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Organizing Committee:

Jingchen (Monika) Hu, Associate Professor, Vassar College
Claire Bowen, Principal Research Associate, Urban Institute

Key Staff and Collaborators:

Nancy Flournoy, Curators Distinguished Professor, University of Missouri
David L. Banks, Professor of the Practice of Statistical Science, Duke University
James Rosenberger, Director of National Institute of Statistical Science (NISS)
Claire Kelling, PhD Candidate in Statistics and Social Data Analytics, Penn State University
Wendy Martinez, Senior Mathematical Statistician for Data Science, U.S. Census Bureau