Section 26:

Confidentiality

and Disclosure

(1)    The provisions of this Act shall not affect any law relating to the disclosure or non-disclosure of any official secret or confidential information or trade secret

(2)    Data collected for statistical purposes shall be treated as confidential and Data confidentiality means that the dissemination of these data (and the statistics which can be calculated from them) shall not permit the identification directly or indirectly of the units concerned and that a prohibition is imposed on data producers against disclosing information of an individual nature obtained in the course of their work.

(3)    Except for the purpose of prosecution undertaken by the Bureau.

(a)    no individual return or part thereof, made for the purposes of this part of this Act;

(b)    no answer given to any question for the purposes of this part of this Act;

(c)    no report, abstract or other document, containing particulars comprised in an); return or answer so arranged as to enable such particulars to be identified with any person, undertaking or business, shall be published, admitted in evidence or shown to a person not employed in the execution of a duty under this Act without the prior consent in writing of the person making the return or giving the answer, or in the case of an undertaking or business of the person who for the time being is the owner manager or controller of the undertaking or business.

(4)    Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (1) of this section, a report as abstract or other document may be published without the required consent if

(a)    the information about an enterprise or establishment is already published or available on a database accessible to the public at large.

(b)    in the case of a monopoly or duopoly, the statistics of relevant sectors of activity are none the less open and publishable, provided they  do not reveal costs of production or profits of individual enterprises.

(5)    Nothing in this part of the Act shall be constructed as.

(a)    authorizing  or requiring the disclosure or production of any information or document if the disclosure or production of the information of document would contravene the provisions of any law for the time being in force;

(b)    prohibiting or restricting the disclosure or production of any information or document which is authorized or required to be disclosed or produced under the provisions of any law for the time being in force.

(6)    A person required under the provision of this part of this Act to furnish any information, estimate, return or particular shall not be obliged to disclose an information or produce a document which—

(a)   he would not be compellable to disclose or produce if he were a witness in a court of law; or

(b)    would involve the disclosure of any trade to require the disclosure to Ministry Department or Authority for the purpose of taxation of any information acquired under the provisions of this Act.

Section 27:

Data

Dissemination

(1) Data producers shall be required to process, disseminate and make accessible to users as a "public good" data collected or compiled using public funds.

(2)  Data producers will be required to release micro level data sets for further analysis, with suitable proviso on confidentially, unless there is a compelling reason, such as maintaining confidentially, not to do so.

(3)  Each year the Board will publish in advance the data to be produced together with date for the release of the data and all data producing agencies including the  Bureau will be required to have a data release policy. To be made publicly available and they have power to impose charges for data products and services.