Data Quality and Anonymisation

School of Business

The Centre for Data Quality and Anonymisation (C4DataQuality) is the centre of excellence for data quality, anonymisation and trustworthy data use.

We address key challenges in data management – particularly in the context of digital transformation, artificial intelligence, open data and open science – and offer practical solutions for businesses, NGOs and public administration.

Overview

C4DataQuality supports data-based projects in establishing a solid and trustworthy foundation. High-quality data is the key to sound decision-making – in research, administration, business and society.

We deal with the practical evaluation and improvement of data, with modern methods for handling missing values and outliers, and with data protection-compliant concepts such as anonymisation and synthesis of microdata. A particular focus is on survey data (survey statistics) and longitudinal studies – precisely the data sources that many of our customers work with on a daily basis.

Our research and services are application-oriented and practical. We develop solutions that are tailored to the specific requirements of our partners – always with the aim of reconciling data quality and data protection.

Service offerings

We support institutions, research projects and data holders in Switzerland and internationally with the following services:

Analysis and improvement of data quality: plausibility checks, editing rules, handling of outliers and systematic errors – including clear recommendations for action.
Consulting on survey statistics: Support with sampling, weighting, non-response analysis and methodological quality of surveys.
Strategies for missing data: Development of robust imputation approaches for surveys, panel and register data.
Anonymisation and data release: Development of protection concepts, including synthetic data for secure data release in compliance with the GDPR and Swiss data protection standards.
Tools and training: Development and provision of modular tools for data verification, anonymisation and imputation – tailored to your data situation.

Interdisciplinary research at the FHNW

C4DataQuality works closely with other research units at FHNW – from psychology to social and economic sciences to technology – as well as with central services such as research support, research data management and data stewards. The center www.swissanon.ch serves as the national center of excellence.