Description: The Asia-Pacific Stats Café on "Balancing Access and Confidentiality: The Role of Synthetic Data in Official Statistics" was held on Monday, 16 September 2024, from 14:00 to 15:15 hrs (UTC+7). Concept note Flyer Presentations UNECE: Synthetic Data for Official Statistics & the UNECE Starter Guide Thailand: Why we need Synthetic Data New Zealand: Balancing Access and Confidentiality: The Role of Synthetic Data in Official Statistics Singapore: Data Exploration and Research: Use of Synthetic Data in the Singapore Department of Statistics Agenda Moderator: Afsaneh Yazdan, ESCAP Opening remarks: Rachael Beaven (3 mins) Presentation 1: Introduction to Synthetic Data and the Guide, Christopher Jones, UNECE (10-15 mins) Presentation 2: Thailand (10-15 mins) Presentation 3: New Zealand (10-15 mins) Presentation 4: Singapore (10-15 mins) Q & A and discussion Closing remarks: Rachael Beaven (2 mins) Concept Note Producers of official statistics encounter the complex challenge of balancing data access with confidentiality. They must safeguard the confidentiality of individuals and businesses while addressing the increasing demand for detailed datasets. Traditionally, national statistical offices have granted trusted users, such as academics, access to micro-level data while providing aggregate statistical tables to other users. However, this approach is not a perfect solution, as it restricts the level of detail available to many users, and the process of vetting and managing trusted users is time-consuming and does not guarantee data security and confidentiality. An alternative solution is the use of synthetic data, which replicates the properties of the original dataset and yields comparable insights, thereby significantly reducing the risk of disclosing sensitive information. This Stats Café session explored the potential of synthetic data and how some countries have used or considered the use of synthetic data in the Asia-Pacific region. Relevant links UNECE Publication: Synthetic Data for official statistics Article on synthetic data (aimed at non-technical readers): Could synthetic data redefine the way we share statistical insights? , Stats Café Home: Upcoming events Concluded events
Description: During this joint webinar by the UN Global Network of Data Officers and Statisticians, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, and of the UN Datathon 2023 we were happy to welcome Aida Khalil, Oluwakayode Anidi, and Max Shang from FAO who talked about how to unlock food and agriculture microdata through the FAM Catalogue. The Food and Agriculture Microdata (FAM) Catalogue was launched by the FAO in 2019 to promote increased access to food security, nutrition, and agriculture-related microdata. As of today, the FAM Catalogue hosts over 1,300 surveys and censuses, providing easy access to their relevant documentation, metadata and, in most cases, microdata. Primarily targeted to FAM current and potential users, the webinar will focus on the Catalogue's main features, its publication workflow and supporting technologies, and on the different microdata access modalities in place. During this webinar the presenters also illustrated some of the datasets available on FAM that could be used in the context of the UN Datathon 2023.
Description: Availability of joint micro data on income, consumption and wealth is fundamental to measure poverty and living conditions of households, overcoming the measures used up to now based on the observation of a single dimension (mainly income or consumption). The production of official statistics on the joint distribution of income, consumption and wealth at the micro level is an up-to-date priority for National Statistical Institutes as well as a key objective at the European level. The webinar will summarise the ISTAT experience for the production of micro-data on household income, consumption and wealth in Italy. It will present the actions taken in order to fill the gaps in term of data requirements and address the major methodological challenges in using statistical matching (SM) techniques. Specifically, we applied SM to European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), Household Budget Survey (HBS), both carried out by ISTAT, and to Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) of the Bank of Italy. The webinar will present the matching exercises to produce an integrated data set on household income and consumption and the deep process of an ex-ante harmonization of EU-SILC and HBS to fulfil those pre-conditions essential for data matching purposes. From the beginning, the work done was mainly directed on defining a sound methodological framework. We tested and applied the traditional statistical matching techniques (nonparametric imputation) and the more innovative methods based on the uncertainty analysis and on the matching of complex sample surveys (Renssen’s weights calibration approach). After the presentation of the main results of the consumption imputation, the problems associated with the imputation of household wealth collected in SHIW will be explained. This is an unprecedented and complex activity but that can benefit from the SM experience accumulated at ISTAT and from the cooperation project with the Bank of Italy to produce micro data on the joint distribution of income, consumption and wealth.
Description: In recent years, almost every government has been faced with very serious challenges, such as the global health pandemic, supply chain disruption, rising energy and food prices, and decreasing household budgets. To handle these crises in the right way, our leaders need the right data at the right time. National statistical offices are tasked to provide these trusted, relevant, timely and high-quality data. All of those data are very sensitive in terms of private information on persons or businesses. To gain access to the sensitive data while guaranteeing that privacy will be preserved, privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) are receiving increased attention. Whereas legal arrangements on data sharing can lead to unwanted breaches, the promise of PETs is that privacy is guaranteed. If you cannot see the original data at any time, you cannot by accident reveal any original information. In this webinar, experts of the task team on PETs will launch the "UN Guide on PETs for Official Statistics". The program is as follows.
Description: The Office of the Chief Statistician of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organized a webinar to introduce the content and the potential use of the microdata...
Source: Eurostat (Data extracted on: 30 Jan 2022 )
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Organizer(s): Eurostat
Description: The objective of this course is to provide the participants with an overview of Statistical disclosure theory and methods related to tabular data protection and microdata protection, as well as the respective software. Participants will be asked to bring case studies that will be discussed in the training.
Target Audience: Staff dealing with statistical confidentiality. Please note: All ESTP Courses are exclusively available to staff members of a European Statistical System (ESS) institution.
Description: The UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics has announced the launch of a pilot programme, to make international data sharing more secure by using Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs). The UN PET Lab is running a pilot program with several National Statistical Offices (NSOs). The lab will demonstrate that PETs can make fully compliant data sharing between organizations possible. PETs help data providers and data users to safely share information by using encryption and protocols that allow someone to produce useful output data without “seeing” the input data. They also typically ensure that data will be protected throughout its lifecycle, and that outputs cannot be used to ‘reverse engineer’ the original data. The PET Lab will see statistical organizations collaborate with technology providers who offer PET technologies. The Lab expects new users and providers to join in due course.
Description: Data Protection is paramount to respect and ensure human dignity and the right to privacy, a fundamental human right enshrined in Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and many other international and regional human rights instruments. To mark Data Protection Day on 28 January 2022, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is bringing together data protection specialists from United Nations (UN) system organizations, including UN Global…
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Original webpage was deleted, archived version from the Internet Archive (not a UN service): Link
Description: This webinar will focus on microdata dissemination programs with application to agriculture data with the aim to support the National Statistical Offices and line Ministries’ efforts toward unlocking access to agriculture survey data. Organized by the AGRISurvey program, managed by the Statistics Division of the FAO (ESS), the webinar entitled “Opening Access to Agricultural Survey Microdata” is designed to build advanced insight on the key elements constitutive of a microdata dissemination program, namely the access policy, microdata documentation (including the DDI-standard), microdata anonymization, and the National Data Archive (NADA) cataloguing tool. Participants will also learn about the Food and Agriculture Microdata (FAM) Catalogue, FAO's microdata dissemination platform managed by the Office of Chief Statistician (OCS). The online seminar will be an opportunity to discuss how these components interlace and, if approached jointly, may offer solutions to ensure confidentiality safeguards are in place as well as to ensure microdata dissemination programs align on best international standards. It will also serve as a platform to share experiences between agencies on both technical and organizational challenges associated with their operationalization and to discuss on methods and solutions to ensure increased access to agriculture data to the widest public. The webinar is suitable for professionals of different levels of seniority in charge of agricultural statistics production and dissemination. Acknowledging the overarching dimension of dissemination programs and the involvement of different departments and offices within the National Statistics Systems, this invitation extends to all officers from divisions and units supporting statistical dissemination programs. WHEN: November 29, 2021, from 10:00 to 13:00 (GMT+0). PRESENTATIONS: Microdata dissemination programs Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC) Microdata documentation Introduction to NADA Microdata dissemination: overview of the FAM Catalogue La diffusion des microdonnées Anonymisation des microdonnées Documentation de fichiers de microdonnées Introduction à l’Archive National de Données (NADA) Diffusion des microdonnées : vue d’ensemble du Catalogue FAM Programme de diffusion des microdonnées de l'enquête agricole annuelle (FAA) RECORDINGS: https://fao.zoom.us/rec/share/RPfxae3JRgGDIuyzohrMh_ZLUbIRZRETyfu-chupdUI73AJJo3WHbXHrgtPAh8JB.5ZltKbfHAE26WecS Access Passcode: pTZf6&9v FIND OUT MORE ABOUT AGRISurvey: https://www.fao.org/in-action/agrisurvey/en/
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Original webpage was deleted, archived version from the Internet Archive (not a UN service): Link
Source: Eurostat (Data extracted on: 03 May 2021 )
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Organizer(s): Eurostat Icon-Institut
Description: Make the participants aware of what is involved in the acquisition of PHD for use in official statistics, including the European legal and policy background and what is needed for developing partnerships. The course should enable the participants to apply the acquired knowledge in roles such as developing policies concerning the acquisition and use of PHD and developing partnerships.
Target Audience: Staff from NSIs who are involved or wish to become involved in the acquisition of privately held data (PHD) as a source for official statistics. This engagement may come in different shapes, such as involvement at a legal or policy level, in negotiations with holders of PHD or stakeholders engagement. ESTP Trainings are open to non-ESS members if capacity allows after ESS needs are fulfilled.
Organizer(s): UN Global Pulse United Nations UNDP UNESCO WHO
Description: Join us to our 76th United Nations General Assembly Side Event on 27 September 2021 at 8 AM EST about "Promoting Transparency to Counter Disinformation and Build Trust - UN agencies working together to support Member States in times of COVID-19 and beyond". UN Global Pulse, the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, the United Nations Department of Global Communications, UNDP, UNESCO, and WHO will host the free online event. This follow-up side session to the 2020 United Nations…
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Original webpage was deleted, archived version from the Internet Archive (not a UN service): Link
Description: The short course will introduce basic and advanced concepts of statistical disclosure control, privacy and confidentiality. The topics covered include: 1) introduction to statistical disclosure control, disclosure risk scenarios and types of disclosure risks; 2) measuring disclosure risk for traditional outputs: microdata and tabular data; 3) common statistical disclosure control methods and their impact on data quality and utility. In addition, we introduce a new definition for confidentiality protection called differential privacy which was developed by computer scientists. Differential privacy is a mathematical rigorous definition of a perturbation mechanism that provides formal and quantifiable guarantees of confidentiality. We discuss how differential privacy can be used in the statistical disclosure control tool-kit at statistical agencies as they move towards more advanced, open and flexible modes of data dissemination.
Target Audience: For persons interested in statistical data dissemination, typically based at statistical agencies and organisations, government agencies, national statistical institutes.
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Original webpage was deleted, archived version from the Internet Archive (not a UN service): Link
Description: During this Global Network Webinar, we were happy to have Andrew Trask from OpenMinded, who provided A Tutorial on Remote Data Science. The presentation walked through the main tools (federated learning, differential privacy, etc.) for remote data science, their current state of maturity, and opinions on where these tools will take our society in the next five years. These tools offer the promise of instant, safe, privacy-preserving access to data across every organization with data relevant to your problem.
Source: World Bank (Data extracted on: 03 May 2021 )
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Organizer(s): World Bank University of Chile
Description: This panel will discuss how research is using micro data from firms to understand macroeconomic phenomena and the design of public policy. Marcela Eslava, Roberto Fattal Jaef, and Federico Huneeus, three leading experts in the area, will provide examples on how firm data can shed light on issues such as: growth, inequality, market structure, misallocation of capital, production networks, and productivity. The presentations will show data from Latin America. Jose de Gregorio will lead the discussion after the initial presentations, taking questions from the audience.
Source: Eurostat (Data extracted on: 21 Dec 2020 )
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Organizer(s): Eurostat
Description: The objective of this course is to provide the participants with an overview of Statistical disclosure theory and methods related to tabular data protection and microdata protection, as well as the respective software. Participants will be asked to bring case studies that will be discussed in the course.
Target Audience: Staff dealing with statistical confidentiality. ESTP Trainings are open to non-ESS members if capacity allows after ESS needs are fulfilled.
Description: This side-event will showcase the competence framework on Big Data and data science and the related maturity matrix for statistical offices, the training program on Earth observations for agriculture statistics and the training courses on privacy preserving techniques. The objective is to convey the message that training in Big Data and data science is being developed and is available and open to all the members of the Commission.
Source: Eurostat (Data extracted on: 21 Dec 2020 )
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Organizer(s): Eurostat
Description: The objective of this course is to facilitate the application of methods and tools recommended for census 2021 protection.
Target Audience: Statisticians working on census 2021 statistical disclosure control (SDC) implementation. ESTP Trainings are open to non-ESS members if capacity allows after ESS needs are fulfilled.
Description: Statistical disclosure control (SDC) is a topic of increasing interest to Caribbean statisticians and international development partners working in the subregion. ECLAC has carried out a study of statistical disclosure control methods for census tables which recommends select methods that could be applied to Caribbean census data.
Description: The Statistics Technical Network webinar provided insights about the functionalities and benefits of the FAM Catalogue, FAO's microdata platform on food security and agriculture.
Description: Data collection and information gathering plays a fundamental role in supporting peacekeeping operations. However, lack of proper data protection and risk management practices, especially in sensitive geopolitical contexts, can cause harm to not only identifiable individuals, but also identifiable groups of people. This installment of the (un)data Seminar Series on Outrageous Questions will look at a hypothetical case study based on several real episodes, and will explore the practical solutions for ensuring data privacy, data protection and ethics in peacekeeping…
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Original webpage was deleted, archived version from the Internet Archive (not a UN service): Link
Description: Timely and disaggregated data is more critical than ever in the current global pandemic. Governments need various types and sources of data to: inform planning and decision-making by first respondents; forecast gaps and understand the surge in the required health service resources; and design effective policies that help mitigate the negative economic and social impact on people’s lives. The diversity of data sources and granularity of data required, particularly at the individual level, to respond to the crisis raises issues around personal data protection and privacy concerns. From daily estimates of tests, confirmed cases and fatalities to data on hospitalizations and availability of medical staff and resources, data collected by various public and private entities is needed to effectively respond to the crisis. Countries are rolling out digital ID programs to track patients in order to manage and contain COVID-19, and also collecting mobility data from various entities to measure and encourage social distancing. How do these various sources, technologies and the organisations behind them address privacy concerns while providing data that allows for timely planning and decision-making? This webinar will:<li> - Bring experiences from various entities collecting data from diverse sources to respond to the crisis.</li><li> - Highlight measures and associated challenges to ensure protection of personal data during the current global pandemic.</li>This webinar is part of the United Nations World Data Forum webinar series and aims to showcase examples of how national and international organizations are taking measures to protect individual data and privacy during the global COVID19-crisis.
