DIESIS: a New Software System for Editing and Imputation

This paper is concerned with the problem of automatic detection and correction of inconsistent or out of range data in a general process of statistical data collecting. This problem is formulated as an Integer Linear Programming problem having a Set Covering predominance. This approach overcomes the computational limits of Fellegi-Holt methodology, while maintaining its positive statistical features. The procedure was implemented into a software system called DIESIS, that has been successfully used for the correction of demographical data of the 2001 Italian Population Census.