BLOG – First class workshop on Privacy Preserving Record Linkage

Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage (PPRL) workshop

This workshop brought together domain experts to talk about the concepts, methods, and challenges of privacy-preserving record linkage to an audience that included academic researchers, data managers from NGOs, civil servants from both local and national governments, and technical officers. There was an equal split between attendees who had little or no experience using administrative data and 50% of respondents who had been using administrative data for over 3 years.

Day One

On Day One, Professor Peter Christen (SCADR) and Professor Rainer Schnell (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany) introduced the general concepts of the PPRL process, the key protocols and techniques, and the limitations and vulnerabilities of existing PPRL methods.

Respondents were very positive when asked if the workshop supported their needs, with one attendee stating:

I found this workshop gave a really excellent introduction to PPRL perturbation methods, covering advantages, disadvantages, and practical application remarkably well. One of the best workshops I've attended in some time.

Day Two

Day Two provided the opportunity for participants to either attend a hands-on session (facilitated by Sumayya Ziyad and Dr Charini Nanayakkara, ANU) using Python programs to apply selected PPRL methods to sample datasets, or attend a parallel session provided by keynote speaker, Prof James Boyd (La Trobe University, Melbourne) delivering an online presentation with examples of PPRL and Bloom filtering usage in Australia.

This was then followed by in-person talks on real-world usage of PPRL techniques from guest speakers, including Josie Plachta (ONS), Dr Mike Edwards (SeRP), and Sumayya Ziyad (Australian National University). One respondent commented that they had found the workshop.

…Eye-opening, it has given me an insight into the complexities of PPRL - I wasn't even aware that encryption was being used for this until this workshop.

Positive feedback - wanting more 

The workshop closed with a round-table discussion between the presenters on a number of PPRL topics covered across the two days, incorporating a number of audience questions.

We were delighted that attendees found the workshop very useful with feedback giving 92% satisfaction.

Participants expressed wanting to have more time and

..would have loved to do both streams, although I found the Python stream very useful and really helped to consolidate the learning. 

Future training

We look forward to delivering further technical training in future and will discuss with ADR UK potential areas where training could be in demand, such as synthetic data generation and evaluation, introduction to record linkage solutions and its benefits, and bias in data.

We will advertise any new training courses in our social media channels, our website and the ADR UK website.