NIST launches crowdsourcing challenge to secure public safety data sets

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a non-regulatory agency of the US Department of Commerce, has launched a crowdsourcing challenge to develop new and innovative ways of handling personally identifiable information in public safety data sets.

During times of crisis, experts and researchers require access to datasets that hold key information about the people present in the data set to solve problems like emergency planning and for epidemiology. The researchers require diverse and updated data sets to solve current problems. This poses serious privacy concerns so the challenge aims to de-identify the given data in such a manner that it can be used without any privacy concerns.

The challenge, named as the Differential Privacy Temporal Map Challenge, is a series of contests with a total prize pool of about $276,000 divided into three different categories. It will include a metrics development contest in the form of a white paper, a series of algorithm sprints to develop new tools and techniques in differential privacy, and a contest to improve the usability of source code developed in the previous module.

Applications for the challenge are open from October 1^st, 2020 to January 5^th, 2021 for both the initial categories of the challenge. If you want to apply for the challenge, the links are given below:

For the Algorithm Contest, visit the Challenge on the DrivenData website to view details.

For the Metric Paper Contest, visit the Challenge on the HeroX website to view details.

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