2.11 Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (2002)

Enacted to protect the confidentiality of information acquired from the public. The Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2002 (CIPSEA), Title V of the E-Government Act of 2002 (Pub. L. No. 107-347), has two subtitles. (OMB. Implementation Guidance for Title V of the E-Government Act. October 2006)

Subtitle A, Confidential Information Protection, concerns confidentiality and statistical uses of information. The purposes of Subtitle A are:

To ensure that information supplied by individuals or organizations to an agency for statistical purposes under a pledge of confidentiality is used exclusively for statistical purposes;
To ensure that individuals or organizations who supply information under a pledge of confidentiality to agencies for statistical purposes will neither have that information disclosed in identifiable form to anyone not authorized by this title nor have that information used for any purpose other than a statistical purpose; and
To safeguard the confidentiality of individually identifiable information acquired under a pledge of confidentiality for statistical purposes by controlling access to, and uses made of, such information.

CIPSEA Subtitle A protects information that is acquired for exclusively statistical purposes under a pledge of confidentiality. This subtitle of the law applies to all Federal agencies that acquire information under these carefully prescribed conditions. The protection of information collected under this law is supported by a penalty of a Class E Felony for a knowing and willful disclosure of confidential information.

CIPSEA Subtitle B promotes statistical efficiency through limited sharing of business data among three designated statistical agencies, the Bureau of the Census (Census), the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The purposes of

Subtitle B are:

To authorize the sharing of business data among Census, BEA, and BLS for exclusively statistical purposes;
To reduce the paperwork burdens imposed on businesses that provide requested information to the Federal Government;
To improve the comparability and accuracy of Federal economic statistics by allowing Census, BEA, and BLS to update sample frames, develop consistent classifications of establishments and companies into industries, improve coverage, and reconcile significant differences in data produced by the three agencies; and
To increase understanding of the United States economy, especially for key industry and regional statistics, to develop more accurate measures of the impact of technology on productivity growth, and to enhance the reliability of the Nation’s most important economic indicators, such as the National Income and Product Accounts.