About POSS | Governance | Work programme
The Programme of Official Social Statistics (POSS) was approved by the Government in November 2003 and has been established to provide a coherent system of official social and population statistics across the government sector.
The programme began in the 2005/06 financial year, and maps out a ten-year plan of work involving a number of government agencies, led by Statistics New Zealand. POSS is based on the Official Statistics System Principles and Protocols for Producers of Tier 1 Statistics.
The ten-year whole-of-government programme will:
- consolidate existing surveys into a managed programme
- introduce new surveys to fill information gaps
- exploit other sources of data such as administrative databases
- improve analytical capability, dissemination of information, and access to data.