The CZSO opens a new Safe Centre for researchers

14 January 2019

The Czech Statistical Office markedly diversifies the offer of its services in the area of microdata. Since 15 January 2019, workers of research and scientific institutes will be enabled to independently work in a newly established Safe Centre in the premises of the Central Statistical Library. The access will be possible under precisely defined conditions underlying high data protection.

A similar centre has been established also by Eurostat; other statistical institutes including non-European ones are joining to provide microdata in a similar way, too. “By establishing the Safe Centre we follow current trends of statistics all over the world as well as in Europe. An activity of our colleagues from Hungary, who are pioneers in the Central European region in that sense, was a direct impulse and inspiration for us,” Marek Rojíček, President of the Czech Statistical Office, explains.

Researchers will be allowed to access the Safe Centre only for scientific purposes and on condition that a contract has been concluded in advance and a pledge of secrecy has been signed. “The Czech Statistical Office complies with the wish and interest of academia to work with microdata. Thanks to the Safe Centre, researchers will be able to work with the resource materials independently on their research and thus further enlarge knowledge in many fields. The accent is on safety of statistical data administered by the CZSO and ensuring of data anonymisation,” Jaroslav Sixta, Vice President of the Czech Statistical Office, informs.

The area of the Safe Centre is properly monitored and it is not allowed to carry anything away either in a written or in an electronic form; to use the Internet and to make any records is not permitted as well. With regards to security, it is also forbidden to researchers to bring for example mobile phones in the Safe Centre.

Results of scientific exploration in the Safe Centre are further assessed by professional units of the CZSO so that they cannot contain information endangering data protection and so that they meet relevant provisions of the Act on the State Statistical Service. Researchers are also obliged – even after they have finished their scientific work – to maintain secrecy of confidential statistical data they got acquainted with during their work in the Safe Centre. All principles are described in details at the CZSO website. 

“I am pleased that we are opening the Safe Centre complying with modern standards of independent and safe work with microdata right now when we celebrate the anniversary of hundred years since the establishment of a modern statistical service in our country. I perceive that as another step towards modernisation of official Czech statistics,” Marek Rojíček, President of the CZSO, concludes.

The Safe Centre is currently operated in a pilot regime.

Contact:
Jan Cieslar
Spokesman of the CZSO
T (+420) 274 052 017 | M (+420) 604 149 190
E jan.cieslar@csu.gov.cz   | Twitter @statistickyurad