Quality is at the heart of our work at Stats NZ.
It’s our job to provide data and insights that people can trust. Communities, businesses, and governments rely on the data and statistics produced by Stats NZ when making important decisions that affect New Zealanders, every day.
Quality matters at every stage of the process. Our statistical quality assurance system combines international best practice with what works in a New Zealand context.
The system has six parts that cover everything from making sure we understand what’s needed, through to publication, and on into the future. Each part works together to provide quality.
This system shows what ‘good’ looks like and will be used to improve existing processes and guide new ones.
It can also be used as a framework to help identify where change is needed. For example, it was used in early 2026 to review an error with the Food Price Index and identify areas for improvement.
So that interested people can understand more about the way we work, we have published a paper with more detailed information about the system.
Download the PDF of the full paper below, or read the summary of key points online.
Summary of key points
- Trust underpins the official statistics system: the value of products and statistics is realised through use, and this use is predicated on the trust and confidence of customers and communities. Quality assurance processes build trust by ensuring consistent, reliable outcomes, and provide transparency through detailed documentation and external review.
- Stats NZ has a robust statistical quality assurance system that builds on established quality management frameworks and best practice in official statistics. This system sits across the end-to-end process to ensure published statistics meet user needs. It has six components that together form a cohesive system for designing robust processes that ensure quality is built into every stage, not just checked at the end.
- Data quality is the sum of decisions made across these six components of statistical quality assurance – decisions about statistical design, the strength of data and system controls, the effectiveness of quality assurance processes, the clarity of metadata and documentation, and the robustness of governance, capability, and organisational culture.
- Stats NZ’s statistical quality assurance system will be used to support continuous improvement in our statistical processes by setting clear expectations for existing products to be measured against and new products to be designed towards.
- We are enhancing the statistical quality assurance system by coordinating efforts across methods, governance, change management, documentation, and capability development. The improvement initiatives are making the system more transparent, more consistent, and better equipped to support quality across the statistical production process. The increased complexity of data sources and methodologies employed by national statistics offices – particularly the use of AI – will require our statistical quality assurance practices to continue to evolve.
- Work to improve our statistical quality assurance is part of a broader transformative period for Stats NZ as we utilise more admin data, increase coordination across New Zealand’s official statistics system, and invest in more scalable, robust production systems. This provides a clear opportunity to embed quality assurance principles from the beginning.
The six core components of the Stats NZ statistical quality assurance system.
