Like the Privacy Act, the bill enables access to data for research, subject to strong confidentiality requirements ensuring protection of personal privacy. But the bill goes much further by setting out a comprehensive framework that the Statistician must use when making decisions about access for research. Data may be accessed for the purposes of research and only in accordance with the enforceable confidentiality requirements in the bill. Stats NZ will continue to hold the data, with researchers only having access through a secure portal to the data they need for their research. 