Private Lives and Public Policies Confidentiality and Accessibility of Government Statistics (1993) / Chapter Skim
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1 Principles and Problems
1 Principles and Problems
Pages 15-44
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From page 15... ...
To an extent unparalleled in the nation's history, however, private lives are being encroached on by organizations seeking and disseminating information. In their stewardship of data collection and data dissemination, federal statistical agencies have had a Tong-standing concern for the privacy rights of their data providers, but they now face mounting demands for privacy in the wake of such external developments as telemarketing through random digit dialing and computerized capture of data on everyday activities, like supermarket purchases by credit card.
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How can federal statistical agencies serve data users better by providing more access to useful data and at the same time serve data providers by better ensuring privacy and confidentiality? What principles must guide their actions?
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The Pane! on Confidentiality and Data Access was charged by the Committee on National Statistics and the Social Science Research Council with developing recommendations that could aid federal statistical agencies in their stewardship of data for policy decisions and research.
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Finally, the data subjects and units of analysis for statistical programs include persons and organizations, but when the concepts of privacy and confidentiality are applied to organizations, they have quite different meanings than they do when applied to persons. To make our task manageable, we decided to concentrate our attention on major federal statistical programs and to Took beyond them only to the extent that seemed necessary to provide adequate coverage of confidentiality and data access questions related to those programs.
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Specifically, we have a concern for how a federal statistical agency relates to its three diverse and overIapping constituencies: data providers, government itself, and data users. We direct this report to all concerned with confidentiality and data access issues.
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The ultimate test of the Federal Statistical System is the availability of relevant information; therefore, the question of data access must continually receive a high level of attention. Identifying seven of the larger federal statistical agencies illustrates the reach of the system's activities: Bureau of the Census Bureau of Justice Statistics Bureau of Labor Statistics Energy Information Administration National Agricultural Statistics Service National Center for Education Statistics National Center for Health Statistics Some of these agencies have purposes that are not purely statistical.
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From page 21... ...
Within the government, clients include researchers within the same department (e.g., the National Agricultural Statistics Service provides data to the Economic Research Service in the Department of Agriculturel, other federal agencies le.g., the Internal Revenue Service's Statistics of Income Division furnishes data to the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the Department of Commercel, state and local governments {e.g., the National Center for Education Statistics supplies data to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Department of Education) , business firms {e.g., the National Center for Health Statistics makes data available to the Kaiser Permanente Health Maintenance Organization)
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From page 22... ...
Data providers are often called respondents. When respondents provide information for data subjects other than themselves, they are called proxy respondents.
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Informed consent describes a condition appropriate only when data providers have a clear choice. They must not be, nor perceive themselves to be, subject to penalties for failure to provide the data sought.
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93-579) defines a statistical record to be a record in a system of records maintained for statistical research or reporting purposes only and not used in whole or in part in making any determination about an identifiable individual, except as provided by Section 8 Which authorizes certain kinds of data access, including for research activities by the Bureau of the Census]
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From page 25... ...
As noted above, the principles of democratic accountability, constitutional empowerment, and individual autonomy maintain the ethos of American society and provide valuable ethical guidance for the structure and practice of federal statistical agencies. Recognizing that the guidance they provide is often reinforcing but is not always harmonious, we examine each principle in turn.
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From page 26... ...
seeks to prevail when the complexities of life make a demand upon knowledge and understanding never made before. The principle of constitutional empowerment is increasingly important today as federal statistical agencies struggle to obtain and protect data needed for a factual understanding of a fast-changing, complex world.
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From page 27... ...
As part of their basic mandate, federal statistical agencies are instructed to provide data that can be used to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of government programs. In 1967, Congress affirmed the principles of constitutional empowerment and democratic accountability by passing the Freedom of Information Act to serve democratic values by {11 creating a more fully informed public debate on important issues and {2)
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From page 28... ...
Federal statistical agencies have ethical and pragmatic reasons to be concerned about individual autonomy.2 From an ethical standpoint, - agencies are obligated by the imperatives of our society to respect individual dignity, · agencies should protect the personal information that has been entrusted to them, and · intrusive data collection by agencies can disturb an individual's chosen solitude. From a pragmatic standpoint, most persons who are surveyed are not required to provide data The decennial census is the main exception)
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From page 29... ...
In this section we examine, first, four reasons why government should be involved with gathering statistical information and then four reasons why federal statistical agencies are more appropriate than federal administrative agencies or private agencies to fulfill this function. The government collects data because, first, it has an obligation to inform the public on those matters that affect the welfare of the people individually and collectively.
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From page 30... ...
Fourth, private information providers have a natural interest in protecting their investment, which may limit the spread of information.5 On the other hand, government can disseminate data at cost and ensure that the information is accessible for the public good. For a variety of reasons, the alternatives to federal statistical agencies, whether private information organizations or federal administrative agencies {which do have an essential role in collecting data for regulatory enforcement)
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From page 31... ...
Data on educational achievements of elementary school students, for example, although often collected through privately developed test instruments, have historically been collected and disseminated through governmental mandate. Federal statistical agencies, such as in this case the National Center for Education Statistics, play a key role in coordinating data gathering, maintaining quality standards, and dis .
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From page 32... ...
Because of the extent of the government's information activities, and the dependence of those activities upon public cooperation, the management of Federal information resources is an issue of continuing importance to all Federal agencies, State and local governments, and the public.
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Also, we recognize that useful data are more likely to be provided by individuals and establishments under suitable guarantees of confidentiality. PROBLEMS IN ENSURING CONFIDENTIALITY AND DATA ACCESS Federal statistical agencies confront a challenging environmentapprehensive respondents, exasperated researchers, skeptical funders, and pressures for administrative uses of confidential statistical records.
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As we have noted, federal statistical agencies have experienced pressure to provide data for administrative purposes. Withstanding such pressure can be especially difficult for federal statistical agencies {or programs with statistical functions)
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CAN COMMUNICATION WITH THE PUBLIC BE IMPROVED? For federal statistical agencies to achieve full democratic accountability, they must be continuously cognizant of public perceptions regarding the central issues of data protection and data access.
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The data provider should be notified about the need for such data and how providing the data might affect him or her and that one potential use is for statistical purposes. A more complicated ethical question is what options data providers should have in denying various uses of the administrative data they provide.
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From page 37... ...
to provide sufficient protection of confidential statistical data but create excessive barriers to data access. For example, the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards {1978:2621 noted obstacles to interagency data sharing and, in particular, the inability of agencies to gain access to the Census Bureau's Standard Statistical Establishment List for statistical sampling purposes.
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Combined information from EIA's Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey and the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database {see McGuckin and Pascoe, 1988) would show how plants would react to the implied change in the relative price of energy.
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These topics of data access are further developed in Chapters 6 and 7.
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From page 40... ...
In general, however, there is a need for suitable interagency coordination in meeting data needs and, possibly, for some interagency data sharing. Sharing of identifiable data for statistical purposes can have many potential benefits, including the enrichment of cross-sectional and longitudinal data sets, evaluation and improvement of the quality of census and survey data, improvement of the timeliness and consistency of statistical reporting, development of more complete sampling frames, and improvement of comparability between data developed by different statistical agencies.
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From page 41... ...
Other agencies, like the National Agricultural Statistics Service, have the authority to deny access for nonstatistical purposes but also have more flexibility to share data for statistical purposes. Still other agencies operate primarily under general information statutes, like the Privacy Act of 1974, and have little difficulty in finding ways to participate in record linkages for statistical and research purposes, if they choose to do so.
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We examine in Chapter 4 the legitimate expectations of data users, within and outside government, for access to federal statistical data. We also explore the ethical responsibilities of data users and advocate establishing their legal responsibilities in agency or systemwide statutes.
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We address the management of confidentiality and data access functions in Chapter 8, with particular attention to interagency coordination and the cross-national experience. We also explore issues of agency staffing and data protection legislation.
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44 PRIVATE LIVES AND PUBLIC POLICIES could not have been mounted without mustering the data to show that the problems were important, and that the proposed actions were likely to improve public health. For example, Allison and Cooper {19911 note a case in which Institutional Brokers Estimate System (IBESJ filed suit against a researcher who criticized their data and imposed conditions on academic researchers that {11 require them to clear all potential publications with IBES so the latter can have the opportunity "to identify factual errors or misunderstandings" and (21 require researchers using IBES data to refrain from providing access to others Including research assistants without prior clearance.
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