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2020 Census Data Products: A Workshop

Completed

The U.S. Census Bureau is implementing a new Disclosure Avoidance System (DAS) for the 2020 Census, after concluding that its previous methods permitted larger than expected risks of person reidentification. Implementing the 2020 DAS on 2010 Census data yielded a set of 2010 Demonstration Data Products, allowing data users to study impacts of the new system. The December 11-12, 2019, Workshop on 2020 Census Data Products provided a forum for studying the utility of privatized census tabulations and engaged the user and privacy communities in discussing trade-offs between "accuracy" and "privacy" in shaping the final 2020 DAS.

Description

A planning committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will organize and execute a 2-day public workshop for the U.S. Census Bureau to discuss the suite of data products the Census Bureau will generate from the 2020 Census. The workshop will feature presentations by users of decennial census data products to help the Census Bureau better understand the uses of the data products and the importance of these uses. The workshop will focus extensively on data-product use cases outside the legally mandated apportionment and redistricting settings; however, the uses of and demand for the block-level counts included in the data files produced pursuant to P.L. 94-171 are important to elicit in considering the full suite of 2020 census data products. An important consideration of the workshop will be the overall level of noise that is injected into the results, which is being done to preserve the confidentiality of responses, as well as the allocation of that noise across data products. The discussion will be focused to help inform the Census Bureau's decisions on the final specification of 2020 data products. A proceedings of the presentations and discussions at the workshop will be prepared by a designated rapporteur in accordance with institutional guidelines.

Contributors

Committee

Co-Chair

Co-Chair

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Sponsors

Department of Commerce

Staff

Brian Harris-Kojetin

Lead

Daniel Cork

Lead

Anthony Mann

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