General Official statistics in Germany are predominantly federal. The FSO is entrusted with methodology, the technical preparation of individual statistics, and the compilation and presentation of federal statistics.
Regional statistics are to a large extent decentralized.
The new Law on Federal Statistics 1987 bases official statistics on principles resulting from the 1983 decision of the Federal Constitutional Court on the Population Census. These principles aim at a rigorously applied protection of the private sphere, improved information from respondents, and a strict separation of statistical work from administrative activities. Since German unification, the Law on Statistics for Federal Purposes and other statistics laws also apply to the territory of the former German Democratic Republic. The concentration of statistical work in official statistical offices began as early as 1805, when a central statistical authority was established in Prussia. After the second World War the statistical service as a whole was reconstructed and the FSO was established.