Section 20, The Statistics Act, 2002

(1) Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, no return or other information collected by Statistics Sierra Leone for the purpose of official statistics that relates to— (a) an individual; (b) a household; (c) a business; or (d) any other organisation, shall, subject to subsections (2) and (3), be disclosed to any unauthorised person. (2) The return or other information referred to in subsection (l) may, subject to the directions of the Statistician-General, be disclosed– (a) to the Statistician-General and other officers of Statistics Sierra Leone who have taken the oath of confidentiality referred to in subsection (7); (b) to the person from whom such return or other information was collected or his representative; No. 13 Statistics Act 2002 15 (c) where the information is already available to the public, to the business or other organisation concerned; (d) to the public in the form of lists of the names and addresses of individuals and organisations and their classifications by function, industry or activity, type of legal entity, and range of numbers of employees or other indicator of size; and (e) in the form of lists of the kinds of products produced, manufactured, stored, bought or sold, or services rendered, by businesses, or other organisations or classes thereof. (3) The Statistician-General may, for statistical purposes, disclose to any person or organisation, information or data gathered in the course of a joint collection undertaken with such person or organisation, on condition that— (a) the name, address or any other means by which the respondents may be identified is deleted; (b) any person or organisation who is involved in the collection of, or who may use, that information or data, must first take an oath of confidentiality as provided in subsection (7), irrespective of whether he has taken an oath of confidentiality in terms of any other law; and (c) the Statistician-General is satisfied that the confidentiality of that information or data will not be impaired. (4) Notwithstanding anything contained in any other law, an entry made by any person by virtue of this Act in any document or a return or its contents, is not admissible as evidence in legal proceedings, except for purposes of criminal proceedings under this Act 16 No. 13 Statistics Act 2002 (5) Information collected by any person, business or other organisation for his or its own purposes and communicated to Statistics Sierra Leone is subject to the same confidentiality requirements as information collected directly by Statistics Sierra Leone, irrespective of any other confidentiality requirements to which it may have been subject when it was collected. (6) The results of the compilation and analysis of the statistical information collected under this Act may not be published or disseminated in a manner which is likely to enable the identification of a specific individual, business or other organisation, unless that person, business or organisation has consented to the publication or dissemination in that manner. (7) The Statistician-General and every officer of Statistics Sierra Leone shall— (a) before assuming duty, take the oath of confidentiality set out in the Second Schedule, prohibiting disclosure of any information coming to his knowledge by reason of such duty before its release is authorised by the Statistician-General; (b) preserve and promote confidentiality in respect of all information that may come to their knowledge by reason of their employment. [Margin: Offences and penalties.]