FCDO statistics: confidentiality policy
Updated 6 November 2026
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fcdo-statistics-statement-on-confidentiality/fcdo-statistics-statement-on-disclosure-control
The Code of Practice for Statistics requires producers of statistics to manage data and statistics safely and securely and be open about how data will be used and protected. This policy sets out how FCDO protects the confidentiality of personal information used in producing official statistics, ensuring compliance with data protection law and the Code of Practice for Statistics.
We protect the security of our data holdings in order to maintain the privacy of individuals, fulfil relevant legal obligations and uphold our guarantee that no statistics will be produced that are likely to identify an individual, while at the same time taking account of our obligation to obtain maximum value from the data we hold for statistical purposes.
Staff are given information security training on a regular basis, data handlers are provided with additional training dealing with the principles of the Data Protection Act including confidentiality of personal information and they are required to sign to say that they have received this training.
Disclosure control techniques are implemented for all statistics published by FCDO. Statistical disclosure control is a set of methods used by organisations when sharing data to ensure that no sensitive or private information is released whilst making sure the data is still functional for users.
On occasion, FCDO may need to apply methods to published statistics to reduce the risk of any sensitive information being released. Disclosure control at FCDO is used proportionally to protect the confidentiality of: individuals, staff, partners, commercially sensitive information, or where sharing the statistics could pose a threat to security.
Two main methods of disclosure control are used at FCDO:
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Suppression: FCDO may supress a value in a data table to prevent disclosive information being released. In these cases, we may also need to complete some secondary suppression. This means that at least one other value in the data table is also supressed so that the supressed values cannot be calculated through subtraction from the total.
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Rounding: FCDO may round values in a data table to ensure we do not reveal individual or private information. Rounding is also used where the limitations of some of our data sources mean that we cannot report figures with absolute precision. Rounding numbers can also make them easier to read and compare.
Any statistical outputs published by FCDO which have used these disclosure control methods will highlight within their supporting documentation to ensure users are aware.
These methods are in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics which says that ‘we must protect the confidentiality of individual and business information when producing statistics. Be transparent about the choices made in line with the producer’s published confidentiality policy and apply appropriate disclosure control methods before release’.
Follow up
Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).
You are welcome to contact us directly by emailing CentralStatsHub@fcdo.gov.uk. Alternatively, you can email OSR on regulation@statistics.gov.uk or contact them via the OSR website.