How does the Office for National Statistics (ONS) secure my data? video transcript

Pete Benton, Deputy National Statistician:

We’ve been doing censuses for two hundred years and we’ve always kept data safe.

So, when you do your census, the information comes to ONS and nothing that identifies a person ever leaves.

Keesia Samuels, Senior Analyst:

So, data is always treated confidentially and privately at the ONS.

We do not share data with any private sector company.

All statistics are anonymized.

It is the law to ensure that we keep that data secured.

Pete Benton, Deputy National Statistician:

It won’t affect your tax, it won’t affect your benefits, because we never share information about individual people.

We keep it confidential for 100 years. Nobody can see it.

All we ever publish is aggregate statistics.

Jonathan Wroth-Smith, Head of Census Statistical Design:

When we talk about statistics, we always talk about numbers that are used at an aggregate level.

So those are not individual characteristics about an individual, it’s how they look as a higher geographic level.

So, it might be for your local authority or your city.

Keesia Samuels, Senior Analyst:

So, after 100 years, we will release the census records.

We recently released the 1921 records, and this is so important for many people.

It really tells us what our country and population looked like 100 years ago and it really helps historians to understand the type of population we had at that time.

Jonathan Wroth-Smith, Head of Census Statistical Design:

It’s really important to us that we have the trust of the public so that they’ll continue to give us the data to be able to create the statistics that we need to create.

Keesia Samuels, Senior Analyst:

We really need your data for the census to help inform local authorities around how they can provide services for their communities.