July 13, 2023
StatsNZ counts iwi census lessons
The Government Statistician says there’s more work to do to improve Māori census turnout.
Estimates released yesterday indicate between 89 and 91 percent of the overall population including 75 percent of Māori competed forms for the 2023 census.
That’s well short of the 90 percent target for Māori.
Mark Sowden says there were lessons which can be applied for Census 2028.
“One of the things we found worked really well this time was very targeted engagement so working with the Māori community, working with iwi to really connect in and using influencers in the Māori community to encourage people to complete the census. We also tried iwi-led collections, Te Mana Whakatipu, so having iwi collect their own data, and we need to evaluate the pilot we had of that but that will certainly be part of the future,” he says.
StatsNZ may be able to use data held by other government agencies, and integration of that could change the nature of future censuses.