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RELEASE POLICY FOR DATA FROM THE STATISTICS OFFICE

Background

It is important to have a release policy regarding statistics so that there is public confidence that statistics are not influenced in anyway by anyone outside of the Statistics Department. The policy should include a process where statistics are approved for public release and that they be available to the public at the same time as they are released to members of the Government.

Process

The Statistics Department is part of the Ministry of Finance and reports to the Permanent Secretary for Economic Development, Investment and Commerce. The policy is that data to be released is verified by the Chief Statistician to ensure there is no breach of confidentiality and for acceptable quality of data, then given to the P.S. for Economic Development, Investment and Commerce for approval for release.

Release of data will be by a short press release to the Anguillan media giving a brief description of the content of the data to be released. The date of release is within 2 days of approval by the Permanent Secretary. The Permanent Secretary will endeavor to provide feedback on the release within a week as to whether approval will be forthcoming or not. If he does not give approval then it would be for statistical rather than political reasons.

Only when the data has been released through an announcement to the media would the data be available to members of the public service, government, Caribbean and International organizations and the public at large.

Reviewers of Data Quality

In some situations it may be necessary to have certain expertise, not available from the Statistics Office, to assist in validation of data. The assistance would be for content reasons. For example if there were a survey on literacy, members of the education department could provide guidance on questionnaire design and validation of the data. In these situations, the experts providing assistance would be named in advance and would be asked to sign a document maintaining the confidentiality of individual identifying data.

Conditions of Release of Data

All data aggregates would be made available to the public on request once the data has been released. Data requestors would bear any costs of the work of special tabulations. The Statistics Office publishes summary data on the Government web site.

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