The changes envisaged in the amendment address an urgent concern of the social and economic sciences that has been voiced for many years, namely the possibility to make individual statistical data usable for research purposes and, at the same time, also to link them with other register data, provided that these have been released by the competent body for scientific purposes by ordinance. This access to data is of crucial importance, especially for an institute like the IHS, for successful scientific work at an internationally recognized level.