Abstract:
The Federal Statistical Office and the Statistical Offices of the Federal States (Länder) in Germany provide a wide range of statistical information, information services and access to microdata for scientific research. To guarantee a consistent standard of official data in respect of statistical confidentiality, harmonisation in different aspects is necessary. In this paper, the German way of harmonising statistical confidentiality between the Federal Statistical Office and the Statistical Offices of the Federal States is presented. Besides general legal regulations, the focus is on the harmonisation of access to German microdata. Therefore guidelines for anonymisation of microdata files as well as for data laboratories, confidentiality of output, output checking and tabular confidentiality will exemplarily be discussed.
