You asked
I am writing to submit a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2004, regarding the 2021 UK Census.
Please confirm and provide details of the Data Protection Act registration numbers, and the details of all data controllers and data processors of any independent third parties that are being used to collect and/or process the personal data generated by the 2021 UK Census.
Please also confirm and provide details of the existence of third party processing agreements between all involved parties.
Where the independent third party processor is based outside of the UK, please confirm and provide details of the relevant agreements allowing the passing of personal data relating to individuals covered by the UK Data Protection Act to organisations outside the jurisdiction and protection of the UK data protection legislation, for example, where a company may be based in the USA, please provide details of the US Safe Harbour agreement confirming that the organisation in question is allowed to process personal data, and the details of the license as it appears on the US safeharbor.export.gov website.
We said
Thank you for your request. Please see the following answers to your request.
The suppliers involved in the Census can be found here:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramme/2021censussuppliers
Data Controller and Processor details can be found on the ICO website: https://ico.org.uk/ESDWebPages/Search
We can confirm that schedules of processing exist with Census suppliers.
However, we would be unable to disclose further details of the existence of third-party processing agreements between all involved parties in response to your Freedom of Information request. We believe that the disclosure of this information would prejudice the commercial interests of ONS, the company managing this process, and the third parties involved. Therefore, this information is exempt according to Section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby a Public Authority may not disclose information which would, or be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available. However, we also acknowledge the importance of open and fair competition for companies at tender. Disclosure of the requested information would compromise our relationships with the companies we work with which would likely render them unwilling to work with us in the future. This could further prejudice our ability to conduct tender and procurement exercises efficiently in the future. This would impact our ability to carry out our functions to produce statistics in the public good which are essential in the formulation of government policy. As a result, the protection of our commercial interests outweighs the public interest in disclosure.
The confidentiality of personal census data is protected in law. All census data will be held solely in the UK and no other nation will be able to access personal census data.