# Disclosure Avoidance for Statistical Products Department of Commerce Administrative Order **DAO 216-26**, effective **June 4, 2026**, governing how the [[Census Bureau]] and the [[Bureau of Economic Analysis]] protect confidentiality in published statistics. The order sets a priority ordering of methods. § 5.02 makes **coarsening** — rounding, aggregating, publishing ranges — the preferred category, and permits **suppression** only as a last resort. § 5.01(c) states that "any use of noise infusion is inconsistent with the Department's policies," which bars the entire family of perturbation methods the Bureau's modern products were built on, including the TopDown Algorithm and the [[Differential Privacy]] implementation behind the 2020 Census products. Its structural significance is what it is *not*: not a statute, not a regulation, not a *Federal Register* notice with a comment period. Title 13 § 9 states the confidentiality obligation and leaves the technique to the department, and this order occupies that gap. A departmental instrument signed at the Secretary level now determines what two statistical agencies may publish and at what level of detail. First visible consequence: the 2025 [[American Community Survey]] 1-year estimates were indefinitely postponed in August 2026 pending a compliant method, with no release date set as of late September 2026. The Bureau's own August 17, 2026 statement additionally places the Quarterly Financial Report on suppression, leaves County Business Patterns under review, exempts already-published 2020 Census data, and sets a full ACS transition by 2029 with a 2030 Census demonstration product planned for mid-2027. ## See also - [[Census Data Products Tree]] · [[Census Bureau]] · [[Differential Privacy]] · [[American Community Survey]] · [[Department of Commerce]] · [[Statistical Policy Directive No. 1]]