This project is the second specific grant agreement under the framework partnership agreement on statistical disclosure control.
PROJECT'S DESCRIPTION
This action's main aim was to ensure support, testing, maintenance, and development of SDC software that is of interest to the NSIs in the ESS.
Currently, for NSIs and Eurostat SDC software tools are available to apply several SDC methods.
Each software tool can be considered as consisting of a user interface (UI) and the underlying methods offered through the UI (like modular, optimal, СТА, hypercube, local suppression, PRAM, swapping, etc). The interfaces provide a kind of IT service for making the underlying methods accessible to the users in their respective IT environments. The following interfaces are available:
- ARGUS (μ-ARGUS, T-ARGUS)
- R-packages (sdcMicro, sdcMicroGUI, sdcTable, SimPop).
Regarding the underlying methods, we assume that some of them are "parallel" in the sense that the different interfaces offer similar, but not exactly identical versions. As this parallelity is neither sustainable nor desirable, another goal of the action is to identify such parallel functionalities and to select those that shall be supported.
Notably, we defined this aim with respect to the underlying methods, not regarding the UIs: the UIs cannot be regarded as parallel services, because they indeed provide different services for different kinds of users and this is an important merit.
The R-SDC interface packages obviously offer to integrate the SDC tools into an R-software environment. This is certainly an advantage for a (perhaps growing) number of R-using potential users of SDC methods. On the other hand, at least for complex problems users need to have knowledge in R to professionally use these tools, even though the tools can be called by other software, and despite an existing graphical interface for sdcMicro. For users who are not familiar with R, this may pose a (perhaps major) obstacle, also depending on an NSI's IT strategies and where efforts have been undertaken to integrate a tool into another environment like SAS, for example. We therefore recognize different user groups of the different SDC UIs and hence a need to keep both types of UIs (ARGUS vs. R-sdc).
See more:
- sdcTool on GitHub
- User Support for sdcTools
- sdcTools - User group on JoinUp
- First meeting of the sdcTools user group
PROJECT DATA SHEET
Project name: User support for and maintenance of SDC tools
Contract type: FPA SGA 2
Project status: Finished
Project dates: 26/04/2016 to 24/04/2018
Duration: 24 months
Total eligible costs: 221 845.13
Total funding: 149 904.70
PROJECT DATA SHEET
Coordinator: Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS).
Co-partners: Statistics Austria, Statistisches Bundesamt (DESTATIS), Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), and Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia (SURS).
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