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Maximising the value of data - Statistics Act, 1993 provisions

In the normal course of its business, the CSO publishes those tabulations and analyses which it considers most useful for the very broad user community. However, the CSO has neither the expertise nor the resources to meet directly all of the very detailed and useful research demands on statistics. There are two particular mechanisms under the Statistics Act, 1993 that the Office uses to help satisfy this demand.

Anonymised microdata files

The Statistics Act, 1993 allows the CSO to make available to researchers, for statistical purposes only, information obtained in any way under the Act in such form that it cannot be directly or indirectly related to an identifiable person or business subject to such conditions and restrictions as the Director General may determine. This provision is particularly suitable to support social research. It has recently been the practice, under this provision, to make anonymised microdata files available to researchers through the Irish Social Science Data Archive (ISSDA). The anonymised files lodged with the ISSDA relate to the Quarterly National Household Survey, the Household Budget Survey, a 5% sample of the Census of Population records, and a 15% sample from the 2002 Census of Population of those at work to support analyses of travel to work patterns. Researchers have to abide by demanding protocols when working with these data.

Officer of Statistics

Under the Statistics Act, 1993 Section 34 (links to the Irish Statute website), the Director General may authorise a researcher to be an Officer of Statistics for a specified period to perform particular statistical analysis on microdata collected under the Act. This is the approach adopted for statistical research on anonymised business microdata since, even when working with anonymised data files, the characteristics of certain businesses make them susceptible to indirect identification. In these circumstances, the researcher is subject to the full rigour and penalties of the Statistics Act, 1993. In these limited instances, the research work has to be carried out within the CSO since the Office will not allow the anonymised microdata out of its premises, and proposed publications are checked by the CSO to ensure that confidentiality is not being breached.