UN PET Guide: Methodologies and Approaches
The UN Guide on Privacy-Enhancing Technologies for Official Statistics was launched at a side-event of the UN Statistical Commission on 9 February 2023. The purpose of using privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) is to make the sharing of sensitive data between various parties possible. The focus of the guide is then also on the question: how can we use technology to mitigate privacy risks and give provable privacy guarantees throughout the collection, processing, analysis and distribution life cycle of potentially sensitive data? Protecting data from unauthorized access, processing or distribution is the simple goal of PETs. The drafting of the guide was a collaborative process, with many experts contributing from the statistical community, but also from private sector, academia and civil society. They all see the societal benefits of improved and safe sharing of relevant micro-data for better public policies.
The PET Lab Open House webinar (on Thursday, 23 March 2023, 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM, NY time) will discuss Chapter 2 of the UN PET Guide, regarding the Methodologies and Approaches used for privacy-enhancing technologies.
Agenda
Moderator: Jess Stahl, Openmined
Opening Remarks
Matjaz Jug, Statistics Netherlands
UN PET Guide for Official Statistics: Methodologies and Approaches
Introduction
Rob Pisarczyk, Oblivious.ai
- Rationale and overview of Chapter 2
Input privacy
- SMPC and HE - Kyoohyung Han, Samsung
- TEE - Rob Pisarczyk, Oblivious
Output Privacy
- DP - Salil Vadhan, Harvard University
Practical considerations
Owen Daniel, ONS, UK
Q&A
Invited comments / questions
Kurt Rohloff, Duality
Open Q&A
Closing
About
In January 2022, the UN PET Lab was launched bringing together a community of practitioners in the field of Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) who would experiment, learn, and share their insights with a focus on use cases for official statistics. Members of the UN PET Lab meet weekly to work through the challenges of implementing PETs in concrete use cases, creating value by enabling data sharing that would, otherwise, not be possible. The UN PET Lab actively explores projects dealing with relevant, real challenges for the community of official statistics. Statisticians and academic researchers collaborate with PETs technology providers using safe (publicly available) data and environments to implement a variety of different PETs while maintaining a technology agnostic approach.
Previous Open Houses
Agenda
Welcome
Jess Stahl
Update on the UN PET Lab
Matjaz Jug, Ronald Jansen
About the Legal Task Team on Privacy Preservation Techniques
Mayank Varia
Examples from the National Statistical Systems
- Statistics Netherlands - Matjaz Jug and Maria Ohoioeloen
- US Department of Education - Stephanie Straus, Georgetown University
Q&A
Open House
Ronald Jansen
Closing
In the first UN PET Lab Open House we gave an overview of the PET Lab, including the “trade data” use case and the experience of the US Census Bureau participating in this project. Furthermore, we had 11 introductions of those working or interested in working on use cases involving PETs. This showed a wide array of communities, which are involved, such as the statistical community (BPS Indonesia), government (ICO), civil society (the evidence quarter) and private sector (duality technologies, Samsung, SIIA and others). A recording of the first event is available on this webpage.
In the second Open House, we would like to focus on the demand for PETs from the statistical community. The UN PET Lab is working under the umbrella of the United Nations Statistical Commission and its focus is therefore skewed towards supporting national statistical offices. For the second event we have asked Mr. Omar Seidu of the Ghana Statistical Service and Ms. Aberash Abaye of the Ethiopian Statistics Service to talk about the practical instances, when their offices need to consider privacy concerns either in accessing data of third parties or in disseminating micro-data. As usual, we want to keep the last 20 minutes for participants to introduce their work in this area.
Agenda
The latest of the UN PET Lab
Andrew Trask
Introduction of demand for PETs in National Statistical Offices
- Ronald Jansen - United Nations
- Aberash Tariku – Ethiopian Statistics Service
- Augusto Fabel – IBGE - Brazil
- Irving Cabrera – INEGI - Mexico
- Abel Dasylva – Statistics Canada
Q&A
UN PET Lab and You
- Introductions by participants
Agenda
UN PET Lab Overview
- Overview of the UN PET Lab
- Presentation of Use Case
UN PET Lab and You
- Attendees introduce organization, interest in the PET lab, and potential use case(s)
- Q&A
- Wrap-up and concluding information