[This update expands the 8/14/26 item with additional resources and is reorganized for clarity.]
Census Bureau
[Note: The Census and Commerce news items are related, although the Commerce Department changes likely have broader impact.]
Census Bureau director's blog (Aug 17)
Population Reference Bureau Associate VP Mark Mather comments on the PRB Federal Data Users Forum: "...[the order] bans noise infusion and designates coarsening as the preferred disclosure avoidance method.
- 2030 Census: The CB plans to release a demonstration data product in mid-2027 for public feedback, which will inform census testing and 2030 Census design decisions.
- ACS: The CB is conducting research into how these methods will be used and expects a gradual transition, completed by 2029. Already-published products, including the 2024 ACS, won't be affected.
- Other products: Demographic surveys that use noise infusion will undergo disclosure risk assessments. Most economic indicators rely on suppression and won't change, but the Quarterly Financial Report will return to suppression. The CB is exploring alternatives for County Business Patterns, and LEHD products will continue using noise infusion until state data-sharing agreements are updated."
See also the PRB
Disclosure Avoidance Explorer (an interactive guide with hypothetical data)
TPM (Aug 11)
"The Trump administration is planning to dramatically reshape the data the Census Bureau collects, setting the stage for an audacious effort to curtail crucial information used in voting rights complaints and revive a right-wing effort, pursued in Trump’s first term, to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count used to determine how many members of Congress represent each state in Congress."
Wired (Aug 8)
"The US Department of Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau, is circulating a proposed rule that would cease the collection of demographic data on racial minorities and LGBTQ+ people and prevent undocumented immigrants from being counted in the 2030 census, according to documents viewed by WIRED."
See a previous DCSS news item on the Census, "Inside Trump’s Stealth Trick to Rig the Census—and Congress"
Commerce Department Order
Ass'n of Public Data Users (Aug 18)
"On June 4, 2026 the Department of Commerce issued a new order “Disclosure Avoidance for Statistical Products” (DAO 216-26) that limits the types of privacy protection methods that the Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) can use for their data products. This order upends processes developed over decades to foster transparency and public trust and creates a scenario in which there will either be less privacy for our personal information, or less usable public data, or both. Notably, the DAO has resulted in an indefinite delay in American Community Survey, is likely to result in changes to the availability of County Business Patterns data, and is serving as a justification to remove some demographic information from the decennial census."
dataindex.us (Aug 12)
"On June 4, 2026 the Department of Commerce issued a new order “Disclosure Avoidance for Statistical Products” (DAO 216-26) that limits the types of privacy protection methods that the Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis can use for their data products.
"Data users noted early on that the order would likely affect data availability, and we are now beginning to learn the scope of that impact. For example, on August 4, 2026 the Census Bureau announced an indefinite delay in releasing data from the American Community Survey."
See a previous DCSS news item on the Commerce Dept policy, "Update on Commerce Department data confidentiality policy" (July 29)
