This privacy impact assessment (PIA) assesses the privacy impact of monthly CPI development - collection of price data from select businesses.
Download the document below, or read the recommendations and summary online.
Summary
The consumers price index (CPI) measures the changing prices of common goods and services that New Zealand households buy and is a key measure of economic performance. Currently, the CPI is published quarterly.
To provide more timely information about potential price turning points, Stats NZ is moving to publishing a monthly CPI.
This will underpin important decisions around monetary policy by the Reserve Bank, fiscal policy by Treasury, forecasting, and indexation. It will inform how the Government funds its priorities and businesses make investment decisions.
As such, the data collection for a monthly CPI can be considered a key input into helping government understand the funding levels required to deliver effective and sustainable public services and informing decisions to address changes to the cost of living for New Zealanders.
To produce a monthly CPI, most prices currently collected quarterly will need to be collected at least monthly - this means shifting the mode or frequency of collection for these prices. To achieve this, Stats NZ is shifting away from surveying and in-field collections towards direct data collection from select businesses operating in New Zealand and third-party suppliers.
Data relating to sole traders will be sourced through alternative methods that will not require direct engagement (that is, web scraping, in store). While the overall CPI includes sole-trader information, this particular assessment is limited in scope to one specific component of the monthly CPI collection. As such, sole-trader data is explicitly out of scope for this assessment, which does not cover the broader collection and use of all data sources contributing to the CPI.
ISBN 978-1-991431-01-1 (online)
