Making Statistics Available to Enhance Community Capability

What is community capability?

Community capability includes:

• The ability of the community to fend for itself - to participate in our society and economic structure and meet the needs of organisations and individual members of the community.
• The ability of a community and its individual members to understand their environment, on a local, regional, national or international scale.

Communities need statistical information to:

• Plan what they need for the community in their current situation.
• Evaluate the impact of interventions and changes over time

Additional dimensions, such as regional statistics, provide the information a community needs to understand the environment in which it works

How does Statistics New Zealand determine what the statistical needs are to enhance community capability?

Many people at this conference are experienced users of statistics and have views on how Statistics New Zealand provides this information to the community. I will briefly present what our aims and achievements are in disseminating information, and the methods we use to determine whether this dissemination is appropriate.

The mission of Statistics New Zealand is:

"to provide New Zealanders with a national statistical service of integrity that is valued and trusted for publishing useful information."

The information Statistics New Zealand produces is intended to be useful and relevant to the public.

This means the content must meet the needs of the community, be written in an accessible manner and disseminated in a way that users can easily obtain it.

Making content relevant and accessible means:

• Having the right mix of products, targeted at the audiences' needs.
• Having the right mix of content and keeping up to date with what is needed.

As Dianne Macaskill pointed out in her opening address, in the last five years Statistics New Zealand has expanded the range of statistics it produces. The "New Zealand Now" series builds on census information and covers a wide range of topical subjects. We will continue to develop the range of analytical topics we cover. Publications such as "Looking Past the 20th Century" (available on the website) draw together both social and economic statistics to present a picture of not just where we are as a nation, but what influences and shapes us.

To assess whether the information is relevant, we receive input from the following:

• Direct feedback from major users and the government.
• User groups such as the Mäori forum, ACES, SSAC.
• Comparison with international standards and practices.
• The information requests which come thorough our information service every day.
• Customer satisfaction surveys.
• Website feedback forms.

Of course conferences such as these provide another significant opportunity.

How does Statistics New Zealand make statistics available?

The strategy for ensuring that the information we hold reaches the widest possible set of users now starts with the website, because:

• The use of the Internet is growing at a phenomenal rate, with growing interest even in communities with the least access.
• The use of the Statistics New Zealand website has been growing enormously. In 1995, we did not have a website. Since it was launched in 1996, the site's use has grown hugely. Even since June 2000, the number of unique visitors has grown by 35 percent, to around 20,00 per month, and those people who use it are visiting for longer.
• It is less costly to make information available on the website than it is to print and distribute reports.
• It is possible to make the Web information available in print form through 'print on demand'.

Statistics New Zealand aims to significantly improve the range of data and information available on its website. But the website is only the start of the dissemination strategy. Paper and email dissemination are very important ways of providing information.

There are some issues with the move towards greater use of the Web:

• What is the right balance of Web and paper dissemination?
• If a wider range of information is available on the Web than on paper, is there appropriate equity of access?
• If we focus on Web design too strongly, printed matter becomes difficult to produce. There are costs to having a dual dissemination system, but we have not dropped any paper products simply as a result of making them available on the Web.

The access issue is wider than just statistical. Statistics New Zealand is involved in the e-government projects to consider the issues across the public sector.

Other ways Statistics New Zealand makes information available to users includes:

• Supplying Statistics New Zealand publications to 33 depository libraries around New Zealand.
• An information and enquiry service which is free for the first 10 minutes.
• Newsletters which are available both electronically and on paper.
• Public access to our library in Wellington.

What else does Statistics New Zealand need to do?

We are aware of some areas that need ongoing work including:

• Improving the depth of Mäori and regional information. In the last two years Statistics New Zealand has produced new regional information compendiums and extended the Mäori page on the website to make Mäori information easier to find, and we plan further developments.
• The Guide for the Collection of Community Information published in 1998 has been very successful, and generated requests for more of this type of material.
• Improving the accessibility of information published on methods, sources of error and accuracy of data. The website has provided the opportunity to make this available, through the "About Official Statistics" part of the site and with links from every Hot Off The Press, but more can be done to make this information match the community's needs.
• Continue to improve the explanations and analysis in our releases. In the last five years we have made some significant shifts in our focus in the first release of information, to put the information in its economic and social context and add value and meaning to it, but it is an area where we need to continually extend ourselves.
• Reviewing regularly what is published from some data sources, to ensure that current outputs are relevant while maintaining continuity of information. We need to particularly look at extending the statistical use of administrative data.

Statistics New Zealand sees a need to regularly review key questions

• What are the main information needs from the point of view of enhancing community capability?
• What else should we do to understand community needs for statistical information?
• What else can we do to enhance the community's understanding and use of official statistics?
• What else do we need to do to help the community to be able to collect (where needed) their own statistics?