Anco Hundepool

The CASC Project

In this paper we will give an overview of the 5th framework CASC (Computational Aspects of Statistical Confidentiality) project. This project can be seen as a follow up of the 4th Framework SDC-project. However, the main emphasis is more on building practical tools. The further development of the ARGUS-software will play a central role in this project. Besides this software development, several research topics have been included in the CASC-project. These research topics, both for the disclosure control of microdata as well as tabular data, aim at obtaining practical results that might be implemented in future version of ARGUS and find its way to the end-users.

The ARGUS software in CENEX

In this paper we will give an overview of the CENEX project and concentrate on the current state of affairs with respect to the ARGUS-software twins. The CENEX (Centre of Excellence) is a new initiative by Eurostat. The main idea behind the CENEX-concept is to join the forces of the national NSIs and together bring the skills of the NSIs on a higher level. The CENEX on Statistical Disclosure Control is a first pilot CENEX-project both aiming at testing the feasibility of the CENEX idea and working on SDC. This project will make a start of writing a handbook on SDC, after an inventory and extend the ARGUS software with an emphasis on issues of practical use. Within this CENEX we will organise the transfer of technology via courses, a WEB-site and this conference. Finally a roadmap for future work will hopefully lead to a follow-up CENEX. In this paper we will summarise this CENEX-project and give a short overview of the current versions of ARGUS.

The ARGUS Software in the CASC-Project

The CASC-project has brought together a major part of the SDC-research community in Europe. This joint effort has resulted in many steps forward in the research on SDC. Very visible results of this project are the twin software packages μ-ARGUS and τ-ARGUS. They make many research results readily available. This paper will summarize the CASC-project and give an overview of the current ARGUS packages.

ARGUS, Software Packages for Statistical Disclosure Control

The paper describes two related software packages for producing safe data: µ-ARGUS for microdata and τ-ARGUS for tabular data.

p% should dominate

Both the (n,k)-dominance rule as well as the p%-rule are well known and often used sensitivity measures in determining which cells are unsafe to publish in tabular output. The p%-rule has some theoretical advantages over the dominance rule, hence it is generally advised to use that rule instead of the latter one. In this paper we investigate the relation between the (n,k)-dominance rule and the p%-rule. We propose a dynamic rule to determine a value p*(k) that yields, approximately, the same number of unsafe cells as a corresponding (n,k)-dominance rule.

Three ways to deal with a set of linked SBS tables using τ-ARGUS

In Council Regulation no. 2701/98 of the European Committee, a framework is given on an extensive set of tables concerning economic statistics. Some of these tables are linked to each other. Until recently, there existed no practical solution to a consistent protection of that set of tables, save for a rather naive one. In this paper we will show the new way specific sets of linked tables can be protected using the τ-argus software and compare this with two other approaches.