Federal Statistics, Multiple Data Sources, and Privacy Protection: Next Steps

"This is the second Consensus Study Report of the Panel on Improving Federal Statistics for Policy and Social Science Research Using Multiple Data Sources and State-of-the-Art Estimation Methods. Our first report, Innovations in Federal Statistics: Combining Data Sources While Protecting Privacy, was released in January 2017. In that report, the panel noted that there has been increasing attention in recent years to using data already collected by government entities for statistical purposes, such as evaluation of government programs. These data include such records as employment and earnings information on state unemployment insurance, income reported on federal tax forms, Social Security earnings and benefits, medical conditions and payments made for services from Medicare and Medicaid records, and food assistance program benefits"--Page ix.