A series of Actions were agreed by the 2009 Workshop on Remote Access to Microdata. The December Update to the working group provides the latest information on the status of these Actions:

1. The special microdata issue of the Official Journal of the International Association of Official Statistics (IAOS) is expected to be published in March 2010. Those who attended the Workshop have submitted a paper for this special issue. In addition, the US Bureau of the Census has provided a paper which will broaden the international scope of the publication. This was Action Item 1 from the Workshop.

2. The US Bureau of the Census has joined the Paris Microdata Group. This was Action 4 from the Workshop.

3. An important action from the Workshop was the agreement to prepare a paper on a common microdata access interface (Action 9). Statistics Canada has had the initial running on this Action. The Paper will include consideration of both remote access and remote execution, benefits, risks and costs and a review of possible options.

4. The Workshop participants agreed to meet again in 2010 in order to progress an international microdata access system development collaboration and to leverage on outcomes of several international microdata projects (Action 12). The working group is currently discussing the timing and agenda for this meeting which is likely to take place in June 2010.

5. Metadata. The Workshop participants agreed that microdata metadata should be compliant to a common international standard. It was also agreed that the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) version 3 may be that standard. This was Action 10 but is not due for completion until June 2011. Progress toward implementing DDI for microdata is being made by a number of organisations.

6. Production of a recommended citation style for microdata and ideas for means by which we can encourage researchers to submit their citations for works in the public domain for inclusion in national and international bibliographies (Action 8). The ABS citation guide titled How to Cite ABS Sources was provided as a starter (Action 7). Statistics Sweden agreed to undertake this Action.

7. Standard definition of microdata terms and publication of these in the Statistical Disclosure Control Glossary (Action 11). Terms to be include identified, non-identified, un-identified, de-identified, identifiable and non-identifiable, anonymised, confidential, and confidentialised. Following agreement of definitions , the Workshop agreed that adoption of the terms by participant organisations was to be encouraged. A draft set of definitions has been prepared and compared with other available sources. The draft definitions will be circulated to the working group from February-March 2010.

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