New law could undermine confidence in official statistics

Wednesday, 22 June 2022

Longstanding obligations to protect confidentiality appear to have been watered down in the Data and Statistics Bill, Len Cook, writes.

Len Cook is a former UK and New Zealand government statistician, a former president of the NZ Institute of Public Administration and a former vice-president of the International Statistics Institute.

OPINION: Without notice by all but a scarce few, the independence of the government statistician and the transparency of government data sharing and use in New Zealand could change after this year.

The Minister of Statistics David Clark has managed to avoid the public scrutiny of the constitutional implications of the Data and Statistics Bill despite transparency being a proper expectation for such change by citizens in a democratic society.

The bill presented to Parliament by the minister waters down the role of the government statistician through the simple means of enabling the role to be delegated to unspecified persons or organisations without any further legislative oversight or qualification. Nowhere else in the world have changes of this sort been made. Ironically, we now know that ministers will similarly dilute the role of independent children’s commissioner by a board.

In effect, the Government is using the role and authority of the government statistician to provide an umbrella for extended data sharing across the entire range of government agencies, and unspecified non-government entities. Longstanding obligations to protect confidentiality appear to have been watered down. There are improvements needed now in research access and responsiveness to Māori, but these can be solved more simply.

The Data and Statistics Bill presented to Parliament by Statistics Minister David Clark waters down the role of the government statistician, says Len Cook.

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The administrative records of government departments provide data about current policies and practice, from the perspective of government administration. Those countries that have the most reliance on administrative records for official statistics generally have wide-ranging administrative registers for addresses and personal details. Such registers require continued compliance by citizens with registration processes that are rare in Westminster systems.

Len Cook: “we need trustworthy official statistics to have confidence in how we measure progress or lack of on economic, environmental and social concerns.”

The Data and Statistics Bill will not operate with the strong legislative oversight and regulation of data sharing and data linkage across government that is in place elsewhere, such as the Australian Data Availability and Transparency Act 2022, or the United Kingdom Digital Economy Act 2017.

The minister’s arguments for the bill are glib and frivolous.

“The 1975 act makes no reference to data at all”.
‘“[The 1975 act] lacks the flexibility to respond to the changes in data and digital that we are seeing.”
“ … but this [1975] act was written before personal computers were widespread, before social media, before the cultural changes that technology continues to drive.”
“[The 1975 act] does not provide the kinds of tools we need to boost the supply and quality of administrative data – so, this is data that's collected for other purposes, often: for registrations, service delivery, transactions, record keeping.”
“ … it [the bill] modernises the framework for accessing data and research.”
“ … and [the bill] supports Stats New Zealand to become a data-first agency, an administrative data-first agency.”

Regardless of the political predisposition of ministers of the day, we need trustworthy official statistics to have confidence in how we measure progress or lack of on economic, environmental and social concerns.

It is the independence of the government statistician in the use of the confidential information provided to government only for statistical use that underpins trust in official statistics. No policy, service or compliance organisation that I am aware of has maintained without question a consistent reputation for being as responsible, scientific and transparent, for as long as the government statistician has.

The bill makes the government statistician a close partner of the policy, enforcement, surveillance and operational agencies of government through overseeing data sharing on an unspecified scale. It reverses the long-standing constitutional checks that distance the government statistician from policy advocacy or justifying the operational delivery of policies.

In providing such agencies with the powers of the government statistician, as statistical clones, concerns of the public legitimacy of statistical functions critical to trust in government may lead to a loss of the trust we need to have in the role.

To apply properly the legislative authority for legitimising such clones, they would need to have the expertise required of the government statistician, which is not likely to be an essential requirement or condition of appointment to other positions.

Only last week the prime minister wisely commented about trust in government being “something that can be built up over decades but torn down in mere years”. The minister might take heed of his own leader. His deletion of clause 17 of the Data and Statistics Bill is essential for affirming the uniqueness of the powers and authority of the government statistician and ensuring its trustworthiness.