National Institute of Statistical Sciences

• Prototype table servers
  
  
• Alternative versions of the aggregation algorithms employed in the NASS system, which generalize more readily to other settings

Fienberg and Dobra are working on Bayesian formulations of the table disclosure problem, and expect to have results later this summer.

This fall, with the arrival of new postdocs Dobra and Gomatom, work will begin at NISS on design and implementation of regression servers.

2. NEW PROPOSAL. A second NISS digital government proposal is in the final stages of preparation, for submission by July, 11, 2001. The scientific focus is issues of theory, methodology and prototype software that address data confidentiality, data integration and data quality. These are three major problems facing Federal statistical agencies. Project personnel include statistical and computer scientists from NISS, Carnegie Mellon University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Michigan (Institute for Survey Research), Purdue University and Southern Methodist University.

3. RECENT TECHNICAL REPORTS, all at www.niss.org/dg/technicalreports.html:

• Disclosure Limitation Methods and Information Loss for Tabular Data, George T. Duncan, Stephen E. Fienberg, Ramayya Krishnan, Rema Padman and Stephen F. Roehrig. To appear in Confidentiality, Disclosure and Data Access: Theory and Practical Applications for Statistical Agencies (sponsored by the Census Bureau and edited by Julia Lane)
  
  
• U.S. Census Confidentiality: Perceptions and Reality, Stephen E. Fienberg and Margo Anderson. To appear in the Bulletin of the International Statistical Institute.
  
  
• Web-Based Systems that Disseminate Information from Data but Protect Confidentiality, Alan F. Karr, Jaeyong Lee, Ashish P. Sanil, Joel Hernandez, Sousan Karimi and Karen Litwin. To appear in a volume on digital government edited by A. Elmagarmid and W. McIver and published by Kluwer.
  
  
• Web-Based Systems that Disseminate Information but Protect Confidential Data, Alan F. Karr and Ashish P. Sanil. Proceedings of dg.o 2001.

4. JSM EVENTS. Those interested in the project are cordially invited to attend two NISS events at JSM '01:

• NISS RECEPTION, on Monday, August 6 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM, in the Madrid/Trinidad Room of the Atlanta Marriott Marquis hotel. The reception will feature the presentation of the first Jerome Sacks
  Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research.
  
  
• NISS SESSION: "The NISS Transportation Project: A Retrospective." Presentations by Jerome Sacks (Duke), Paul Speckman (Missouri) and Jeffrey Picka (Maryland), accompanied by commentary from David Banks (BTS), will highlight major results and lessons learned this project, which is about to end. The session will be from 8:30 to 10:20 AM on Wednesday, August 8.

5. NISS NEWSLETTER. The July, 2001 edition (Volume 2, Number 1) of the NISS Newsletter is available on the NISS Web site, at www.niss.org/newsletter.html.