Statistical Disclosure Control

Statistical disclosure control 

Statistical disclosure control can be defined as the set of methods to reduce the risk of disclosing information on the statistical units (natural persons, households, economic operators and other undertakings, referred to by the data), usually based on restricting the amount of, or modifying, the data released. 

There are different SDC methods, depending on: 

• The type of data released (microdata, tables, maps)
• The effect of the methods on the data released (data suppression, data perturbation) 

Statistical offices must apply statistical disclosure control methods and tools to ensure that there are no confidential data (data that can be attributed to individual respondents) in the published data. This is a legal obligation of statistical offices. 

Statistical confidentiality 

Statistical confidentiality is the obligation of statistical offices to: 

• protect the information on the statistical units; this includes physical (data security) and logical (statistical disclosure control) protection of the information on statistical units,
• use the data for statistical purposes only.