1. Based on legal administration principles, surveys conducted by government agencies are implemented as prescribed by the Statistics Act and its enforcement rules. Furthermore, in order to avoid increasing the burden on the public and companies, the Statistics Act and its enforcement rules impose strict restrictions on private-sector surveys conducted by government agencies, and specify that a prior review system must be adopted.
2. Apart from granting government statistical organizations the power to collect data, personal data also protected by the Statistics Act. Article 45 of the Statistics Act Enforcement Rules explicitly requires that the statistical personnel of government agencies conducting surveys shall maintain the confidentiality of all micro data obtained from various surveys. Except for statistical analysis overall, such data may not be used for any other purposes. If any statistical personnel disclose a respondent's data, resulting in injuries to the rights and interests of the respondent, he/she may be disciplined in accordance with the seriousness of the injuries. He/she shall also be held accountable under the law for any criminal liability incurred from disclosing the confidential data of a respondent. As a consequence, data obtained from statistical surveys must be processed properly. When data is subsequently announced, it must reveal only overall information, and not reveal any information on specific individuals or companies.