Toward a comprehensive disclosure control framework for shared data

Although the goal of pervasive data sharing has persisted for over a decade, most large-scale efforts fail to reach the critical mass of participation necessary to sustain it due to the excessive costs involved. These costs often stem from the lack of standardized methodology and tools to implement disclosure controls that address data sharing risks. We present a framework that addresses the problem comprehensively by considering policy level risk (e.g., NDAs) and technical (e.g., data anonymization) disclosure control issues in concert. Doing so facilitates a superior balance of utility and risk mitigation by ensuring that policy and technical approaches complement one another. Moreover, the framework is driven by the pragmatic utility goals of the data release rather than general risk factors, which helps to focus the effort on exactly those parts of the data necessary to achieve desired goals. The output of the framework is a standardized audit trail and description of the data sharing scenario, which enables the reuse of key components in other data sharing efforts. The framework greatly decreases the data publisher's overall costs while simultaneously enabling a more evolved and effective balance between utility and risk management in data sharing.