The programme of Official Social Statistics (POSS) aims to provide a coherent set of official social and population statistics to meet the key information needs of government and the community. These statistics allow New Zealanders to understand their society, and are used to monitor social outcomes, allocate government funding, improve understanding of causal relationships and plan for the future.
POSS comprises a range of statistical data collections across government including the 5 yearly Census of Population and Dwellings, repeated household surveys and administrative data sources adapted for statistical purposes.
Stakeholders are central and local government agencies and service providers, non-government organisations, international bodies, researchers and the public of New Zealand.
POSS operates across the government sector and is led by Statistics New Zealand. It contributes to the Vision of the Official Statistics System of "an informed society using official statistics".
POSS Vision
The vision of POSS is:
"understanding New Zealand society"
POSS Outcomes
The outcomes from POSS will be:
- Trust and confidence in official social and population statistics
- Improved understanding of New Zealand society
- Informed decision making relating to the well-being of the New Zealand population
To achieve these outcomes, POSS will:
- be an efficient, co-ordinated, whole-of-government programme, planned for present and future information needs, and achieve a good balance between competing demands
- provide data that is fit for purpose:
- relevant: collect information on questions important to New Zealanders across social statistics domains
- consistent and coherent across data collections and over time, including use of common target populations, standard concepts, questions and classifications and harmonised methodologies and systems
- sufficiently accurate for the main purposes for which they are designed; allow measurement of social outcomes for key population sub-groups (such as age groups, sex, Maori and other key ethnic groups); produce statistics for geographic areas at levels appropriate to the data source
- timely, data are released within a time period that permits the information to be of value; provide certainty of delivery to data users
- interpretable, with sufficient information about the data provided as necessary to interpret and use the statistics effectively
- ensure statistics are accessible to the public, government and researchers in forms appropriate to the type of use, and maintained as an enduring national resource
- promote widespread use of statistics and support a strong and capable community of researchers and other professionals in the New Zealand government, academic and private sectors
- protect the confidentiality of information provided by respondents and manage respondent burden
Guiding principles
Seven guiding principles underpin the development of the POSS. These principles are:
- to build and maintain user/stakeholder ownership and engagement
- to consistently adopt best practice in statistical methods and project management
- to enable access to data whilst protecting respondent-provided information
- to provide certainty of delivery to data users
- to standardise systems to enable greater investment in analysis and information management
- to be cost-effective in the production of high quality official social statistics
- to maintain sustainability of POSS funding.
Statistical framework
Improved coherence will be assisted by the development of a statistical framework based on social well-being outcomes. The framework contains discrete domains or subjects comprising:
- population
- housing
- crime and criminal justice
- economic standard of living
- knowledge and skills
- health
- paid work
- culture and identity
- social connectedness
- human rights
- physical environment