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. The Programme of Official Social Statistics (POSS) is based on the Official Statistics System Principles and Protocols for Producers of Tier 1 Statistics.
The ten year whole-of-government programme aims to establish a coherent system of official social and population statistics across the government sector by:
- consolidating existing surveys into a managed programme
- introducing new surveys to fill information gaps
- exploiting other sources of data such as administrative databases
- improving analytical capability, dissemination of information and access to data.