1. Data Accessibility and Confidentiality in Population and Households Censuses
United Nations Regional Seminar on
Census Data Dissemination and Spatial Analysis
Nairobi, Kenya, September, 2010
Yacob Zewoldi, Eliahu Ben-Moshe

2. The ultimate goal of any data collection exercise, including censuses, is to safely guard the confidentiality of such census information, while maximizing the accessibility of census data.

3. Why is confidentiality important?
Individual data collected by statistical agencies for statistical compilation, whether they refer to natural or legal persons, are to be strictly confidential and used exclusively for statistical purposes
principle 6 of the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics

4. Long term benefits better cooperation from the public
more data from the public and better quality
improved accessibility to data and to higher quality data

5. How to guard confidentiality in a census operation?
(i) Confidentiality in all aspects of data collection operations (ii) Legal framework (iii) Outsourcing (iv) Publicity (v) Training of staff and enumeration manuals (vi) Enumeration (vii) Data dissemination (viii) Database Transcript of information

6. Accessibility is a Census strategic objective
The strategic objectives of the ceneus include: “implementing policies designed to safeguard the access of all users to census results”

7. Quality assurance
Even if data are accurate, they do not have sufficient quality if they are produced too late to be useful, or cannot be easily accessed, or conflict with other credible data, or are too costly to produce

8. What is accessibility
Accessibility is the ease with which statistical data can be obtained by users, and reflects the availability of information from the holdings of the agency in general, and census information in particular

9. Accessibility should take into :account
The suitability of the form in which the information is available
The media of dissemination
The availability of metadata
That the user has reasonable opportunity to know the information is available and how to access it
The affordability of that information to users in relation to its value to them

10. About the education and training of users

11. Promotion of, and training on, uses of census data
users may be willing to use the information but require additional training to more fully understand the data
needs for training need to be identified early in the census planning process

12. Prepare in advance
Identify areas and types of users in which the statistical office wishes to focus
establish partnerships with other bodies to provide training
Perhaps, consider also approaches other than classroom training to provide learning-at-a-distance opportunities

13. Topics to be addressed potential uses of census data
how to access census data
interpretation of census data at the broadest level, including the interpretation of its completeness and level of accuracy

14. Thanks for your attention