Statistician (Confidentiality Officer)

Special Placement Factor:

• Experience with performing or overseeing application of statistical techniques to mitigate privacy threats and minimize risk of disclosure of confidential data, which can include experience serving as a disclosure review officer or on a disclosure review board.

Basic Entry Requirements:

• Degree: that included 15 semester hours in statistics (or in mathematics and statistics, provided at least 6 semester hours were in statistics), and 9 additional semester hours in one or more of the following: physical or biological sciences, medicine, education, or engineering; or in the social sciences including demography, history, economics, social welfare, geography, international relations, social or cultural anthropology, health sociology, political science, public administration, psychology, etc. Credit toward meeting statistical course requirements should be given for courses in which 50 percent of the course content appears to be statistical methods, e.g., courses that included studies in research methods in psychology or economics such as tests and measurements or business cycles, or courses in methods of processing mass statistical data such as tabulating methods or electronic data processing.

OR

• Combination of education and experience -- courses as shown in A above, plus appropriate experience or additional education. The experience should have included a full range of professional statistical work such as (a) sampling, (b) collecting, computing, and analyzing statistical data, and (c) applying statistical techniques such as measurement of central tendency, dispersion, skewness, sampling error, simple and multiple correlation, analysis of variance, and tests of significance.

Specialized Experience:
Applicants must have one (1) year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-13 level. Specialized experience is experience which is in or related to the line of work of the position to be filled and which has equipped the applicant with the specific knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully perform the duties of the position.

Examples of specialized experience include:

• Collecting, acquiring, analyzing, storing, disseminating, and sharing statistical data in compliance with federal laws and best practices for protecting confidentiality and privacy.
• Providing expert advice on Statistical Disclosure Limitation (SDL) techniques and other data privacy methods, including the use of methods involving differential privacy and synthetic data.
• Developing standards to assess data sensitivity levels and conduct risk assessments on each dataset, consistent with regulatory requirements.
• Contributing to the development, implementation, and oversight of best practices to properly balance data utility and confidentiality protection.
• Providing expert advice on laws, regulations, and policies protecting confidentiality and privacy, including the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018.

Additional information on the qualification requirements is outlined in the OPM Qualification Standards Handbook of General Schedule Positions and is available at OPM's website: https://www.opm.gov/qualifications/standards/indexes/num-ndx.asp

All qualification requirements must be met by the closing date of this announcement.