Big shake-up for census proposed

Stats NZ has proposed radically changing the way future censuses are conducted, to address escalating costs and reflect low turnouts and new technology.

Until now, the census has involved attempting to get everyone in the country to fill in forms every five years, either on paper or online, and filling in as many “blanks” as possible using data collected on Kiwis in the normal course of government business.

But the cost of the 2023 census has climbed to an expected $314 million, while the proportion of people filling in census forms fell short of the former government’s 90% target, adding to the case for a rethink.

Stats NZ proposed yesterday turning its existing approach to the census on its head by putting the so-called “administrative” data collected in the normal course of government business at the forefront. It would then only directly seek information people to fill in the gaps that data couldn’t provide.

Stats NZ said it might in future ask everyone a smaller number of questions, but it might also decide to only ask a sample of people to fill in forms.

“The sample would be large enough to make sure the data is high-quality, but not everyone would need to do a census survey,” it said.

If it moved to only sampling the population, it could do that more frequently, with some polling occurring annually.

The proposal is part of a broader change in culture at Stats NZ under new broom Mark Snowden, who was appointed chief executive in January 2020.

Sowden signalled last year that changes were on the cards for the census, saying last year’s census might be the last conducted in its current form.

Sowden said traditional census collection models “with a large-scale field workforce” were becoming unsustainable in terms of their cost and the burden on respondents.

If it wasn’t surveying everyone, Stats NZ could “do a lot more with hard to reach populations and ‘priority’ populations”, he said. “Working in partnership with community groups is really effective, but it’s also a much higher cost model.”

Sowden said he hadn’t seen significant pushback within Stats NZ to its new approaches.

“If you are a career statistician, you look at what the Americans and the Australians and the British are doing – they are all going in this direction as well.”

Stats NZ was keen to provide “more data in more consumable ways for small businesses”, he said.

At the same time, Stats NZ was considering whether it continued to produce its Labour Cost Index, Sowden revealed.

The deadline for submissions on the proposed overhaul of the census is June 18.