Our everyday lives are full of interactions where admin and data intersect, and from tax returns to school enrolments, data is a powerful tool for understanding New Zealand. In a piece recently published in The Post, CEO and Government Statistician Colin Lynch writes about the human story behind administrative data.
There are few phrases less likely to quicken the pulse than "life admin". Starting a new job. Enrolling a child at a new school. A business filing a tax return. Goods arriving at or leaving a New Zealand port. These are the everyday, ordinary transactions that New Zealanders do. But collectively, they can tell us an extraordinary amount about New Zealand.
Every day, information is created through these ordinary interactions. That information is what us statisticians call administrative, or admin data. There is nothing new about using it to understand our country - admin data has been a key part of the data underpinning the story of New Zealand for much of our history.
Over recent times, administrative records became increasingly important to areas such as economic statistics. Tax information, for example, allowed us to understand large parts of the business economy without needing to repeatedly survey every business.
And as technology improved, so did our ability to bring different sources of information together. That history matters, because "admin data" can sometimes sound like a new or experimental idea that hasn't been done before around the world.
It isn't.
What is new is how effectively it can be used, and what we can learn from joining it all up together.
Administrative data can come from across government, businesses and other organisations. What makes it administrative is not who holds it, but why it was originally created: usually to deliver a service, administer a programme or record a transaction, rather than specifically to produce statistics.
Take something as mundane as a business filing tax information.
For that business, it is primarily about meeting an obligation.
But across tens of thousands of businesses, those records help build a picture of how different parts of the economy are performing and changing.
The individual transaction is mundane. The collective picture is not.
The same principle applies across our everyday lives.
One person changing an address is an administrative task. Seen alongside other information, these changes help us understand how populations are moving and where a new school might be needed.
One business filing information for tax purposes is primarily meeting a legal obligation. Collectively, those records help tell us what is happening across whole industries.
However, administrative data cannot tell us everything, and as statisticians, we recognise that.
There are experiences, attitudes, behaviours and activities that may never appear in an administrative record. In those cases, statisticians still need to ask. My job is to make sure we do that in a way that gets the right information from the right people, so it can be used to make better decisions.
The future of statistics is not zero-sum. It is not about choosing between administrative data and surveys, but about using the right source for the right question. The future of statistics is about using the right source, or combination of sources, for the question we are trying to answer.
Irrespective of the source, bringing information together also comes with a responsibility to protect it. Privacy, security and confidentiality are fundamental to how we access, combine and use people's data.
That is why improving the quality of administrative data matters. Last month, Stats NZ published a cross-government Admin Data Improvement Plan to improve the completeness, accuracy, timeliness and consistency of information agencies already collect.
Different organisations often record the same things in different ways, an address, occupation or ethnicity, for example. The plan is about reducing those inconsistencies, so information from different sources can be brought together more reliably and used with greater confidence.
Perhaps the easiest way to understand administrative data is therefore not to think about systems at all.
Instead, think about New Zealand going about its day. A child enrols at school. A birth is registered. A business files tax information. A building consent is issued. A tenancy bond is lodged. Each action creates a tiny fragment of information. The power of admin data is in bringing those fragments together, carefully and responsibly, and combining them with other information where needed, to help us understand how our country is changing and what comes next.
Life admin may be boring, but the story we get to tell from it is anything but.
