From our friends at the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC).

NSGIC State Representatives and members of state GIS coordinating councils are invited to the May 4 Council of Councils Forum, to be held virtually from 1 to 4 pm ET. 

Register here or email Amy Holmes (amy.holmes@nsgic.org) for help with registration. Please note that members of state GIS coordinating councils - if not NSGIC members - may participate in this special virtual event at a rate of $20 per person. Email Amy with those guest names and she will assist with registration and invoicing.

Through several panels and interactive discussions, participants will hear the stories of several state councils as we explore various council models, purposes, and impacts. Next week’s discussion will continue on as we work to document the ‘anatomy of a council’ to articulate the essential components of a flourishing state GIS coordinating council. 

Please note you must be a current NSGIC member as well as a state GIO, NSGIC state representative, and/or state GIS council representative to register to attend or invite non-members of your State GIS Coordinating Council.

For those in local government working with Census data the following article may be of interest. It refers to the issue of Differential Privacy.  

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

“Differential privacy is a system for publicly sharing information about a dataset by describing the patterns of groups within the dataset while withholding information about individuals in the dataset. The idea behind differential privacy is that if the effect of making an arbitrary single substitution in the database is small enough, the query result cannot be used to infer much about any single individual, and therefore provides privacy.”

Census has been working on this issue for the past several years in advance of the release of the 2020 Census.  Not everyone is happy with or in agreement with the decisions surrounding this issue. 16 states, including Utah, back Alabama's challenge to Census privacy tool:

https://www.ksl.com/article/50145599/16-states-including-utah-back-alabamas-challenge-to-census-privacy-tool

If you rely on Census data for demographic analysis we would recommend keeping up on this issue.