Len Cook: Former National Statistician on the 5-year Census being scrapped

There are concerns scrapping the traditional census won't deliver the desired results. 

Stats NZ is moving to a system using Government collected admin-data, saying the current five yearly Census is financially unsustainable. 

Census-style questions will still be asked in much smaller annual surveys looking at a small fraction of the population. 

Former national statistician Len Cook told Mike Hosking data-wise, this won't cut it. 

He says admin-data comes from about a dozen different sources, none of them complete. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Not just monthly inflation numbers are coming our way, of course,
which is the good news. We've also dumped the census
twenty eighteen, twenty twenty three. They're a complete mess. So
from twenty thirty onwards we will use administrative data and
annual surveys. Linkork is the former National Statistician director of
Britain's Office for National Stats len Bury, good morning to you,
Good morning Mike. Eighteen to twenty three or eighteen and
twenty three, that was a total cockup. Did that do

(00:22):
the census in or do we just not need the census?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Look? What approved is that if you don't manage it properly,
which we did for one hundred years, then you won't
get it, you won't do a very good job. And
that's all approved. We leave them both those occasions. The
government statisticians at the time thought they knew better than
to repeat what we'd learned at that.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Hundred year theery are we going to be able to
cover ourselves data wise with this administrative data and annual serveys?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, if you know, if you think about it, a
census as a rolling snapshot of every household in New
Zealand at a five year basis administrative data. First, it
comes from about a dozen or so different sources, none
of which are complete for the population, and none of
them tell you at any particular time what is happening

(01:15):
to a single individual. So, for example, your dealings with
the police department, your tax department, housing, social welfare, child
protection do not all occur at the same time. So
when we bring together your information from an administrative records
of different departments, then some of it will relate to
ten years ago, some of it possibly twenty years ago,

(01:37):
and some of it more recently. So what we have
to do out of that sort of hotchpotch is work
out how best we can fill in the gaps to
create a sort of a snapshot at any particular time.
But it's not made up at all in that sort
of very direct way that the census is is.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
So they're making a mistake, the government of making mistake.
We need to do should do Bettertainish.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Government thought they would try and look at this, they
even did when I was there, and just yesterday they
made a decision that in twenty thirty one they're going
to carry on and do what they did since eighteen
forty one. And I can assure you that the British
think a lot more deeply about what they're doing, about
how they use information, and they have a much more
demanding community of users than we have.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
That doesn't surprise me, funily enough, Sadly, Lenn Good catch
up former National Statistician Director of Britain's National Office for Statistics, Lynn.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Cook for more from The Mic Asking Breakfast. Listen live
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