The draft Law on Official Statistics and State Data Governance (Oficialiosios statistikos ir valstybės duomenų valdysenos įstatymo projektas) has begun its path to the state legal basis. With the new legislation, we are aiming for a major reform of state data management, which will allow us to activate the fragmented layers of data accumulated by state institutions.

Why was it needed?

Because efficient state data management = technology + law + competence

Various state and departmental registers and information systems of state and municipal institutions, establishments and enterprises store a large amount of population, business and other data that are of great value and can and must be used to make various decisions that create the welfare of the state and society and open them for re-use. The current legal framework does not allow for flexible use of state data for different purposes - state data are isolated in separate information systems of different technological maturity, and data sharing for common or separate tasks of institutions and bodies, as well as solution of complex tasks based on inter-institutional cooperation (e.g. shadow economy, migration, tax modelling, etc.) is legally very complicated, difficult or impossible. Therefore, the state, disposing of particularly voluminous, large volume and value data, cannot legally use this data for solving various tasks and taking decisions.

Statistics Lithuania, as the manager (controller and processor) of the State Data Governance Information System, developed on the basis of a powerful multifunctional data management system, is able to gather state data required for decision-making and enable other state institutions and agencies to use state data for solving various tasks and taking decisions, opening these data to the public and enabling their re-use. A new legal framework is needed to complete the seemingly simple vision.

What are we aiming for?

1. To become the State Data Agency, to regulate the wider competence in determining the functions and rights of the State Data Agency, and to establish an additional advisory body of the State Data Agency - the State Data Management Council.

2. To define the concepts of state data and other state data governance-related notions/terms: primary data, state data user, state data governance information system user, State Data Governance Programme.

3. To establish the principles of state data governance, the compilation of the State Data Governance Programme, the objectives of state data management, processing and use, security requirements, the rights and obligations of state data providers, state data users and users of the State Data Governance Information System.

4. To create legal preconditions to use the functional possibilities of the State Data Management Platform for analytical purposes of other users.

5. To improve the legal regulation of official statistics by clarifying the responsibilities of respondents, the method of providing statistical data, the concept of statistical form, to expand the scope of statistical data sources with large data collected by private enterprises, to expand the list of non-confidential characteristics of statistical surveys, as well as to grant the right to encourage and promote respondents, participating voluntarily in statistical surveys.

What result do we expect?

We hope and are looking for:

• the possibility to quickly use the data collected by the state (almost 400 state information systems and registers and a lot of departmental resources) for legitimate purposes;

• enabled modern technology – the law keeps pace, goes hand in hand, with technology and the opportunities it offers;

• prompt opening of high value data;

• safe and flexible work of institutions in data analytics areas;

• the end of “feudal fragmentation” in the state data economy.

We would like to remind you: Statistics Lithuania is already authorized to implement the provisions of other legal acts related to data management: to open state data centrally in accordance with the Law on the Right to Information and Data Re-use, and to ensure re-use of health data in accordance with the Law on Health Data Re-use. The new functions are in line with the new role of the state data “caretaker” (“steward”/manager).