Census 2018: Stats NZ says full results to be released mid-2020
Monday, 29 April 2019
Census 2018 has counted 4.7 million New Zealanders and $6 million in extra costs but long-delayed results will miss some vital data.
Statistics New Zealand chief executive Liz MacPherson says the first results of the survey will be released in September, 18 months after the first digital census was held.
The Government has budgeted an additional $6m to fix the broken census, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday, with another $10m allocated to begin the development of Census 2023.
The department has completed patching the survey which failed to count one-in-10 New Zealanders, yet on Monday officials were unable to say how much of the data will be viable.
While initial population data is expected to be robust, information on households and families is expected to be poor quality and there will be no count of iwi affiliation.
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Stats NZ will release population counts, the general and Māori electorates counts, dwelling counts and total figures for some topics in September.
MacPherson was confident the data would be robust enough for use by the Electoral Commission in redrawing electoral boundaries, and for District Health Board funding decisions.
Government data held in the Integrated Data Infrastructure, which includes health and income records, has been used to completely 'imputate' or patch this core census data.
The data was used to cover the 11 per cent of census data, with responses on census night providing 89 per cent of the required results.
But such data could not fill all the gaps in the data meaning many data sets may not make the cut as 'official statistics'.
Statisticians were now evaluating the quality of 60 other data sets, and it was likely answers on activities such as smoking, and religious identity would be among those compromised.
The full set of data is expected to be released by mid-2020, more than two years after census day.
Iwi affiliation, used by iwi to understand population and relevant for Treaty settlements, was the first to be ruled out. It was a loss 'keenly' felt, MacPherson said.
Karen Vercoe, chairwoman of Data Iwi Leaders Group, said Stats NZ and the Government must take urgent action to remedy the 'incredibly disappointing' gap in iwi affiliation data.
'Iwi statistics are critical for iwi to be able to assess the current and future needs and aspirations of their tribal members, to make decisions for and with our people and place, and to measure the impact of our investments,' she said.
The extra work was previously expected to cost an additional $5 million, drawn from Stats NZ's baseline, adding to the projected total cost of $121m.
On Monday, Shaw said 'picking up the pieces' of Census 2018 had come at a cost.
Funding for Census 2018 has been the subject of political posturing over the failure, with the Government placing blame on the prior National government's budgetary decisions.
MacPherson said the funding bid had been robustly debated at the time and 'with the benefit of hindsight, more money may have made a difference to design'.
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