Stats NZ’s head is stepping down over the agency’s failure to safeguard census data, and more officials may soon be in the firing line, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.
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An ‘absolutely unacceptable’ failure
Stats NZ chief executive and government statistician Mark Sowden has apologised and stepped down over data protection failures related to the 2023 census. On Tuesday a Public Service Commission report on the safeguarding of data at Manurewa Marae was released alongside one commissioned by Stats NZ itself. The PSC inquiry found that a number of agencies – chief among them Stats NZ, the Ministry of Health and Health NZ – had failed to adequately protect New Zealanders’ personal information. Lyric Waiwiri-Smith dives deeper into the two reports’ key findings over on The Spinoff this morning.
Along with a number of other agencies, Stats NZ has been told to pause all new contracts or renewals with the service providers at the centre of the controversy. It has also launched its own 33-point remediation plan in response. In a statement published on the Stats NZ website, Sowden said it was “unacceptable for people’s personal information to be misused in the way that’s been alleged, and absolutely unacceptable that we did not ensure that it could not happen”. He added: “To the people of Aotearoa New Zealand, I unreservedly apologise.”
How we got here
The data safeguarding inquiries were launched last year following allegations of improper use of personal census and Covid vaccination data collected or received by Manurewa Marae, Te Whānau o Waipareira (Waipareira) and Te Pou Matakana, formerly known as the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (Woca).
The relationships between the three service providers are complicated, to put it mildly. They include “John Tamihere being the chief executive of Waipareira and the Woca (he’s also the president of Te Pāti Māori), Waipareira being a shareholder in the Woca, and the Manurewa Marae being contracted by the Woca to lift Māori and Pasifika rates of Census completion”, explains the Herald’s Jamie Ensor.
In Stats NZ’s case, it contracted the Woca to “assist with a ‘last-ditch’ attempt to collect census data from people Stats NZ had been unable to reach,” RNZ reports. A group of former workers at the marae alleged that data on census forms was photocopied and used to support Te Pāti Māori’s campaign in the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate. TPM’s candidate, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, the chief executive of Manurewa Marae at the time, won the seat by just 42 votes over Labour’s Peeni Henare. TPM denies any wrongdoing.
More inquiries underway
The data safeguarding inquiry is just one strand of a wide-ranging investigation into the allegations. A police team is investigating the allegations of census data misuse, following a request by Te Pāti Māori that “the New Zealand Police launch a thorough and efficient investigation in order to prove our innocence and clear the good names of those accused”. Both the Woca and Waipareira deny that census data was used for electoral purposes.
Meanwhile the Public Service Commission has referred some matters uncovered by its inquiry to other agencies for further investigation, Stuff reports. Separately, the Electoral Commission has acknowledged it made a mistake in opening a polling booth at the marae, given that the marae’s chief executive was standing for election. On Tuesday, Labour leader Chris Hipkins said that while he wouldn’t go as far as NZ First’s Winston Peters, who claimed Peeni Henare had his seat “stolen”, he did believe “the result in that seat was unfair”.