Alcune osservazioni su protezione dei dati personali e analisi statistica

Abstract

The fact that individuals are free not to participate to a survey, or to answer in an imprecise or even misleading way, represents a simple but very effective form of protection of individual privacy, which makes it largely unnecessary to formally regulate the use of individual data in statistical analysis. The increasing use of administrative data in statistical analysis has modified the picture and brought to the forefront the need of new forms of protection of individual privacy. The regulation recently introduced in Italy represents an important step forward in this direction. However, because it ignores the distinction between statistical surveys and administrative data, this new regulation could lead to an excessive level of protection, with an unncessary increase of the direct and indirect costs of protection.