Confidentiality

The National Statistical Institute is obliged by the Public Statistical Function Act to protect the confidentiality of the data provided by respondents. This Act devotes chapter III to statistical secrecy, stating that "statistical secrecy obliges statistical services not to disseminate, under any circumstances, personal data, whatever their origin".

The protection of confidentiality even makes it necessary not to publish highly disaggregated information in order to avoid the possible identification of the informant.

Statistical confidentiality also applies to all public administrations and public bodies, whatever their nature, except in cases of statistical collaboration between administrations, in which data may be provided as long as the services receiving the data use them exclusively to compile statistics and have the technical and legal means to preserve statistical confidentiality. This is done in order to ensure that different statistical bodies, e.g. INE and a regional statistical institute, do not request the same thing several times from the respondent.

The Law on the Public Statistical Function was published in the Official State Gazette on 11 May 1989 and contains the essential and basic principles of the entire national statistical system.

Among other things, it gives respondents assurances that the data obtained in the various surveys will be protected and covered by statistical confidentiality.