# Data Stewardship Executive Policy Committee The **Data Stewardship Executive Policy committee** is the Census Bureau's senior internal body for everything touching respondent privacy and confidentiality. Its own charter, reissued in July 2026, describes it as the "senior decision-making body for policy issues related to respondent privacy and confidentiality" and says that it "sets policy and makes decisions on policy-related matters within the scope of this charter." It is co-chaired by two of the Bureau's deputy directors, takes a two-thirds quorum, meets on a standing biweekly schedule, and decides by consensus — with the co-chairs deciding outright if consensus fails. Its significance is larger than its profile. The committee approves the technique and the parameters used to protect each of the Bureau's published products; it set the privacy-loss budget for the 2020 census; and it is the final appeal from the [[Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board]], which "implements DSEP policy and makes policy recommendations, but it does not make policy." Two things about it are worth stating plainly: the charter never uses the phrase "disclosure avoidance," and the committee's minutes and decisions are not published. So the choice that governs what every census table can tell a reader is made by a body whose reasoning is not on the public record. > [!note] Stub > This is a short entry that hasn't been fully written yet. ## See also - [[Federal Disclosure Avoidance Crosswalk]] — the four tiers of authority over statistical method, and why this committee sits at the bottom of them and decides anyway - [[Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board]] · [[Differential Privacy]] · [[Disclosure Avoidance for Statistical Products]] - [[Census Bureau]] · [[Census Bureau Org Chart]] · [[2020 Census]]