.Stat Suite documentation

Confidentiality and embargo data

Table of Content

Version history:
Introduced with August 24, 2023 Release .Stat Suite ’elote’

Definitions

An observation (with all its measure and attribute values) is considered SDMX-confidential or SDMX-embargoed and only accessible by authorised users when the related CONF_STATUS attribute has one of the allowed values. By default, these values are F, N, C and E:

  • F: Free (free for publication)
  • N: Not for publication, restricted for internal use only
  • C: Confidential statistical information
  • E: Not for publication, restricted for internal use only (equivalent to the code N) until the embargo time elapses; Free for publication (equivalent to the code F) after the embargo time elapses.

For more information about the available values, consult the related SDMX standard guidelines Guidelines for Confidentiality and Embargo in SDMX as well as the full SDMX standard codelist CL_CONF_STATUS.

The SDMX Confidential and Embargoed data can only be accessed by users with permission to read Point-in-Time (PIT) data: 2048-“CanReadPitData” (see more about permission business rules).

Restricted data access with embargo time

When the CONF_STATUS attribute has the value E (SDMX-embargoed observations), then access to the underlying observation(s) is restricted until the embargo time elapses. The embargo date-time must be defined with the embargo timestamp specified in the EMBARGO_TIME attribute. Before this timestamp, the observation is access-restricted. When embargo time is reached, then the observation and its underlying measure(s) and/or attribute(s) is not especially restricted anymore and thus accessible according to the usual permissions.

Supported format for the EMBARGO_TIME attribute values: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD e.g. 2022-06-04T10:16:01, 2022-06-04T08:16:01Z, 2022-06-04T10:16:01+02:00, 2022-06-04T10:16:01.021+02:00

Note that, in the Data Explorer visualisation, the display of restricted observations before and after the embargo time elapses remains the same, which is, when having sufficient permissions, displaying the CONF_STATUS attribute value as a flag (if not configured to be displayed in any other way), and the EMBARGO_TIME value as the “Embargo timestamp” value in the “Information side panel”:

Restricted data access with embargo time

Restricted data access

When the CONF_STATUS attribute has the value N or C (SDMX-confidential observations), then access to the underlying observation(s) is always restricted.

Free for publication

When the CONF_STATUS attribute has no value or the value is F (non-restricted observations), then access to the underlying observation(s) is always accessible according to the usual permissions.

Structure and data examples

Here attached are examples of SDMX structure files with the CONF_STATUS and EMBARGO_TIME attributes, as well as a .csv data file containing observations with attributes values for all the above confidentiality examples: