Ensuring New Zealanders are comfortable with how their data is used

Wednesday, 31 August 2022

The Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) is a huge and growing database, accumulated from dozens of government agencies over many years. Stats NZ “maintains strict records of data held in our IDI, including how this is being used”, Mark Sowden writes.

Mark Sowden is the government statistician and chief data steward, and chief executive of Stats NZ.

OPINION: Today, the Data and Statistics Act 2022 comes into effect. As New Zealand’s biggest producer of statistics, it’s important Stats NZ has the right tools for the job.

One of the things we identified in recent years was that our legal framework was no longer fit for purpose.

This much-needed overhaul of our legislative framework is the first since 1975 – before the term data was in common use. Data is increasingly important across government to allocate funding, and fuel digital public services.

As government statistician, my commitment to New Zealanders is to always operate with transparency. Stats NZ maintains strict records of data held in our integrated data infrastructure (IDI), including how this is being used. The IDI provides key insights that help to hold the government to account.

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The Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) is a colossal trove of information. It holds personal data about virtually every New Zealander, and millions more who have lived, and died, here.

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I recognise that we must earn and maintain Kiwis’ trust every day, which is why we place such a high premium on privacy and ethics. The new Act keeps the same intent as the old – particularly the focus on statistical confidentiality – but also modernises our practices, because data has never been more important.

As recently as two weeks ago, anonimised data from the IDI was used to inform the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in care on the long-term outcomes for children in state care. Over coming months, I will add to this repository to include other key data sources used for research and statistics.

The Data and Statistics Act places a particular emphasis on early and meaningful engagement with Māori on our research and statistics programme. This is deeply important to me, and I intend to prioritise these conversations. Stats NZ will listen, learn and adapt our practices in line with these conversations.

Consider the role it played in the modelling, statistics, and research that shaped our Covid-19 response. As government chief data steward, my role is to shape the government data system to make sure it’s fit for the modern era.

I released the government data strategy in 2020 to improve the data needed for research and statistics – data that helps inform decisions and stories that contribute to a thriving Aotearoa.

Mark Sowden: To earn the public’s trust “we ensure data is used for public good, ensure that we have robust security processes in place, and that transparency is baked into the process”.

One improvement is to recognise changes in the way statistics are produced. In 1975, most of our work involved surveys to produce official statistics. We’ll always survey people because it’s the only way to measure some important aspects of society and the economy. However, over time we’ve also been using administrative data more often for research and official statistics.

In order to function with accuracy and transparency, government must keep detailed records. We call this by-product of regular services “administrative data”. Examples of this are during tax collection, benefit receipt, or school enrolment. During public consultation on the bill, a lot of people told us government should collect data once and reuse it, rather than asking for the same information over again. We’ve heard that message.

Over the past two years, we have also had conversations with communities about our use of administrative data in the next census. I will continue this open dialogue.

Reuse of administrative data reduces the burden we put on people and businesses, and often lowers the cost of data collection. It can provide more frequent and detailed insights about our people and our places and can sometimes measure things more accurately than surveys.

Our use of administrative data does carry risks and so the new Act introduces ways to address these. Among other things, as the government statistician I will be setting data standards to improve quality and coherence. There are also important provisions in the Act to ensure data is used ethically, safely, and in a culturally competent way.

But my most important considerations lie outside the Act.

Most importantly, I need to make sure people are comfortable with their data being used for research and statistics. Using data for research is clearly consistent with the Privacy Act 2020, but our research shows the public needs to be assured we can be trusted. To earn that trust we ensure data is used for public good, ensure that we have robust security processes in place, and that transparency is baked into the process. We further commit to having an open discussion about how data is being used.

The Data and Statistics Bill contains clear and specific provisions to meet each of these requirements, and I’ll keep working hard to meet these high benchmarks.

High quality data is key to an informed future – ki te kāhore he whakakitenga ka ngaro te iwi – without foresight or vision the people will be lost. As we embark on this future together, it’s important that we use data safely and ethically. New Zealanders have my personal commitment on that.