2.5 Sharing Data and Further Use Public authorities routinely record administrative data produced by individuals in their interaction with the State. Although these data are collected for specific purposes (e.g. registration, record keeping), their potential can be further utilised to increase efficiency of governmental agencies, inform policy-making and for research purposes. As administrative data are collected systematically and cover an entire population rather than a sample33, they are of great value in terms of identifying irregularities and providing comprehensive knowledge for planning future policies. Moreover, in some cases, administrative records are the first and sometimes the only source of data, e.g. when registering a new-born child or registering refugees on the state border. In this context, responsible disclosure of administrative data is particularly relevant for the public’s right to information. As the analysis of responses to the Global Study questionnaire revealed, one of the main challenges is to ensure efficient data flow between various levels of public administration. For instance, in the section on the administration of justice, some countries provided data disaggregated by region, while indicating that for each region different categories of data were missing.34 Each of these exemptions hindered comparative analysis and increased the error interval in estimating the number of children deprived of liberty. In order to ensure that decisions on the national level are made on the basis of complete, timely and trustworthy data, States should develop both the technical means and legal frameworks to facilitate data sharing between State institutions as well as with relevant non-State actors (e.g. international organisations). This can include, among others, adoption of adequate legislation aiming at harmonisation of data flows between public authorities, establishing common technical and statistical standards for data collection and storage (e.g. metadata standards), adoption of guidelines on responsible data sharing (including data anonymisation) and timely publication of administrative data in open access and accessible format (e.g. downloadable and readable by commonly used software). 33 Roxanne Connelly, Christopher J. Playford, Vernon Gayle & Chris Dibben, ‘The role of administrative data in the Big Data revolution in social science research’, Social Science Research, Vol. 59, 2016, pp. 1–12. 34 Global Study Questionnaire, Australia (State Reply), Democratic Republic of Congo (NHRI Reply), Sri Lanka (State Reply). 49