The future of statistical disclosure control

Understand

Statistical disclosure control (SDC) was not created in a single seminal paper nor following the invention of a new mathematical technique, rather it developed slowly in response to the practical challenges faced by data practitioners based at national statistical institutes (NSIs).

• SDC's subsequent emergence as a specialised academic field was an outcome of three interrelated socio-technical changes: (i) the advent of accessible computing as a research tool in the 1980s meant that it became possible - and then increasingly easy - for researchers to process larger quantities of data automatically; this naturally increased demand for such data; (ii) it became possible for data holders to process and disseminate detailed data as digital files and (iii) the number of organisations holding data about individuals proliferated.
• This also meant the number of potential adversaries with the resources to attack any given dataset increased exponentially.
• In this article, we describe the state of the art for SDC and then discuss the core issues and future challenges.