Confidentiality in the 2001 Census of Population and Housing of Albania
Legal and practical issues
Legal
issues
Article 9
Data protection and professional secrecy
The data collected by the census are
protected in conformity with legislation in force. In particular, INSTAT and
the Ministry of Local Government shall take the following steps:
a.
The
staff who, through involvement in census operations, processing of electoral
lists as well as updating of civil registers, and have knowledge of personal
data, are subject to a duty of professional secrecy as provided by the Law No.
7687 dated 16.03.1993 “on Statistics” and the Law No. 8517 dated 22.07.1999 “On
the protection of personal data”. A public authority shall not derogate from
this duty, under any circumstance. Violation of this duty remains punishable
even after the termination of the employment relationship with census.
b.
INSTAT
and the Ministry of Local Government shall take all the appropriate technical,
organisational and security measures to prevent unauthorised access to
installations where the above mentioned data are conserved, as well as to
prevent unauthorised processing of these data.
c.
The
data collected for statistical purposes, after technical controls regarding
their accuracy and consistency carried out by the census staff, are made
anonymous by deleting the external identifiers from the electronic files.
d.
The
anonymous individual data can be communicated to an authorised third party only
for activities that are in conformity with the statistical aim of the census.
The recipient of the data is subject to the duty of professional secrecy; it
takes the appropriate security measures and ensures that any publication of
statistical results will conform to the provisions of this law.
In
practical terms this is worked out in the Enumerator Handbook as follows:
The main tasks of
Enumerators in the General Census of
Population and Housing
The main task of the Enumerator in the
General Census of Population and Housing is to conduct the work in such a
manner that the census within his enumeration area (EA) is carried out in quality
and within the established timeframe.
The successful implementation of this task
requires that:
…..
·
On basis of the map (or
list) of the area he covers, the Enumerator goes to each dwelling and household
to conduct the interview. He should be polite and communicative with the
persons he interviews. He should not
divulge to outsiders any of the information gathered.
…..
It should be noted that the Enumerator
Guide is not intended to just instruct the Enumerators, but that it constitutes
the principal set of guidelines for all Census workers.
The issue of confidentiality and
proffesional secrecy has been stressed during the training courses of
the census staff.
In addition, the
contractual agreement that all temporary census workers sign before they
set to work, explicitly binds them to secrecy about the information collected
in the course of their activities. Article 7 of the said contract reads as
follows:
7. Professional
secrecy and personal data protection
The contracted person is
under the legal obligation for data protection as provided by the Law on
Statistics, the Law on Protection of Personal Data as well as the Law on the
General Population and Housing Census. The information on personal data
obtained during the performance as census staff, shall not in any circumstance
be transferred or made known to any third party. This obligation remains
punishable even after the end of the contractual relation of the person with
INSTAT and with the census program.
The regular INSTAT staff, of course, is subject to the relevant
clauses in the Law on Statistics, the Law on the General Census of Population
and Housing, and their professional ethics.
Practical issues
Once the questionnaires are
completed, the Enumerators will place them in folders that prevent documents
from getting lost or coming into full view. Once the Enumeration Area (EA) is
completed, the folders are handed over to the Controller in a proper procedure,
whereby a transfer form is completed, and both parties sign.
The Controllers pack the
folders and other documentation in carton boxes, which are transported to the
Census District Office. The Controller supervises the transport. No other goods
are to be transported at the same time. Upon arrival at the Census District
Headquarters, another documented transfer takes place between the Controller
and his Supervisor. This process is repeated until all questionnaires arrive at
the Tirana Census Processing Centre in the International Exhibitions Centre
("the Pyramid").
All temporary workers at the
Census Processing Centre have signed the standard clause that binds them to
secrecy about the information collected in the course of their work. The
questionnaires are stored on shelves in an area in the Processing Centre that
is only accessible to authorised workers. These are a few specialised staff
charged with issueing and receiving EA folders. A computer register is kept,
which at any time can inform about which person has custody of a particular EA.
Folders can be issued only for:
·
Manual check of the EA data quality by the Manual
Checking Group;
·
Computer data-entry work;
·
Computer data-verification work;
·
And for other reasons upon approval by senior
Census management.
Data processing will take
place on a private local area network not connected to the Internet or any
other computer installation. There will be no on-line connection with the
INSTAT central-computing facilities.
The diskette stations on the
computer systems used by data-entry operators will be disabled for the duration
of the operation.
All census workers are
required to carry identification badges. Just as INSTAT, the Census Processing
Center will have a 24-hour door guard.
Individual data will not be
disseminated, except for the purpose of modernising and computerising the civil
registers, as authorised by the Census Law.
Upon completion of tables
for publication, they will be inspected for cell values small enough to
introduce a risk of identification of individuals or households. If such cases
are encountred, cells will be collapsed or any other necessary measures taken,
to fully protect individual's privacy.