At the Office for National Statistics (ONS), we have a legal obligation to protect personal information. It is a criminal offence to improperly disclose information held by us that identifies a person or business.
The measures we take to keep your data secure
We treat all the personal information we hold with respect, keeping it secure and confidential. We only allow approved and trained researchers to access the data, and always in secure areas. We do not allow anyone to remove these data from our secure systems and we do not benefit financially from buying or selling any data.
We take our responsibility to protect personal information very seriously and are constantly reviewing and renewing our procedures to make sure they are robust and effective.
Find out more about our data protection policy.
Ensuring that no one can be identified in the statistics we publish
We comply with data protection legislation that makes sure your personal information is safe and secure. Personal information is any information that could allow you to be identified. For example, your name, address or date of birth.
For all of our published statistics, we use processes known as statistical disclosure control methods. These prevent the potential identification of an individual, household or business, or attributes relating to them. This is a legal and ethical duty and a requirement of the Code of Practice for Statistics. It is also an international principle of good statistical practice that we always follow.
Learn more about our statistical disclosure control methods.
How your personal information becomes statistics
We collect, store, process and use data to produce statistics. Some of this information comes from our own surveys and some from other sources, but no individual can be identified in the statistics we publish.
Turning all this personal information into statistics involves some specific steps to ensure that it is reliable, complete and confidential.
First, we compile the data from online responses, physical paper copies, or a mixture of both. Then, we clean the data, looking for any duplications or other errors. Next, we use carefully designed and recognised statistical methods to fill in any gaps in the data. We then cross-check our data to ensure we have high-quality statistics. We also de-identify or anonymise data at the earliest possible point. This means removing all information that could identify an individual.
Throughout the process, the safety and confidentiality of your information is our top priority.
Linking data ethically and safely
We have developed a service that allows analysts to easily link data in a safe, secure and confidential way. The Reference Data Management Framework is made up of five indexes that link and match data on addresses, businesses, classifications, demographics and location. This allows us to protect individuals' privacy and makes it easier for people to use datasets.
Being open and honest about the information we use
To increase our transparency and accountability, we are working towards releasing more information about what we do and how we work at the ONS.
This will include information about where we get our data from. For example, we use "administrative data", which are made up of information we all provide when we access public services, such as the tax and benefits systems. We also get data from other public bodies and alternative data sources, such as supermarkets and other retailers.
Find out more about our data sources.
You can ask us for the information we have on any subject you choose. You can do this by making a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
Find out how to make a FOI request.
If you have any questions about our products or the information that we hold, please contact us.
We are also sharing what we know about people's attitudes to data and seeking people's views on how we use data to produce official statistics.