1. Quality, efficiency and productivity: a challenge for official statistics
EFTA/CROSTAT/EUROSTAT Strategic Management Seminar, Split, November 2007

2. Session 1a Legislative framework
Heinrich Brüngger
Director, Statistical Division
UNECE Geneva

3. Functions of a statistical law
Legitimize operations of official statistics, notably data collection with response obligations
Define the national system of official stastitics and the duties and rights of the actors in this system (incl. coordination and accountability)
Ensure the professional independence and impartiality of the actors of the system
Ensure the exclusive use for statistical purposes and the protection of confidentiality for any data about natural or private legal persons
23 February 2019

4. Character of a statistical law
Umbrella law for all activities of official statistics in a country (special case: federally organised countries)
No exhaustive list of domains
No exhaustive list of producers of official statistics
No exhaustive list of surveys
Possible exception with special laws: censuses
23 February 2019

5. Scope of a statistical law
For statistical surveys (data collection from respondents for exclusively statistical use): the entire life cycle from design to dissemination
For statistics based on administrative sources or environmental data, for which the use of statistics is a secondary use: only operations that are specific to the statistical use, including dissemination of results of official statistics, but not the primary data collection from households or companies
23 February 2019

6. Impartiality
Avoid conflicts of interest for producers of official statistics with respect to impartiality and exclusive use of individual data for statistical purposes
There must be at least one producer (NSI) for which official statistics is the core or even exclusive task
All other producers have to demonstrate that they are able and willing to do the job with full respect of the principles/code of practice, and they have to define one or more specific organizational unit(s) for this task
23 February 2019

7. Confidentiality Two components:
Exclusive use for statistical purposes (of which official statistics is the major part); → institutional and organizational measures
No disclosure, whether directly or indirectly, of information by which a third party can derive additional information about a person, households or private economic actor (protection of privacy): → organizational measures
23 February 2019

8. Confidentiality (ctd.)
Organizational measures to be regulated in the statistical law:
All persons in charge of statistical operations (incl. those from outside the statistical system) to be punishable even after they cease their statistical functions
Producers are responsible for the safety measures, especially concerning records with identifiers
Special provisions for statistical registers
23 February 2019

9. Confidentiality (ctd.)
Matching of individual data from different sources with the use of identifiers:
Should be possible for purposes of official statistics without special legal basis in each case (only exception in the public sector from the specificity rule of the data protection law)
Has to be strictly controlled and monitored and may therefore be best limited to NSI
May have to involve data protection watchdog (depends on other law)
23 February 2019

10. Confidentiality (ctd.)
Statistical law should foresee that the chief statistician can issue lower level standards on the implementation of confidentiality rules that are valid for all producers of official statistics.
These standards should be public
23 February 2019

11. Relationship between statistical and other legislation
With the possible exception of census laws, articles about official statistics in other laws should be avoided
If they cannot be avoided, they should not be in conflict with the provisions of the statistical law
If they are in conflict with the statistical law, it should be clear that the latter prevails
If there are statistical laws also at entity level, the provisions of the national law should prevail in the case of conflict
23 February 2019

12. Possible conflict areas with other legislation
Status of NSI and its president/DG
Creation of organizational units for statistics with other producers
Access to administrative data sources for NSI, including identifiers
No transmission of confidential data by the NSI to other parts of the government or to courts where there is a risk of non-statistical use
23 February 2019

13. Conflicts with other legislation (ctd.)
Interference in methodological decisions because of use of aggregates for allocation or indexing purposes
Non-simultaneous release of results to all users
Requests for advance information ahead of release dates
Rules for clearing releases with government bodies from outside the statistical system
23 February 2019

14. Relationship statistical law/data protection law
Official statistics cannot be generally exempt from data protection law
Need for specific provisions in the data protection law for statistics (and research) concerning
Rules of specific purpose
Explicit legal basis for sensitive data
Right of inspection and correction by persons concerned
23 February 2019