Differential Privacy for Government Agencies—Are We There Yet?

Government agencies typically need to take potential risks of disclosure into account whenever they publish statistics based on their data or give external researchers access collected data. In this context, the promise formal privacy guarantees offered by concepts such as differential seems be panacea enabling quantify and control loss incurred any release exactly. Nevertheless, despite excitement in academia industry, most -- with prominent exception U.S. Census Bureau have been reluctant even consider concept for strategy. This paper discusses reasons this. We argue that requirements implementing approaches at government are often fundamentally different from industry. raises many challenges questions still addressed before can used an overarching principle when sharing public. The does not offer solutions these challenges. Instead, we hope stimulate some collaborative research efforts, believe problems only interdisciplinary collaborations.