What is the charter for?
The charter sets out the relationship between Statistics New Zealand and businesses operating in New Zealand who provide us with economic, financial, and business information.
About us
Statistics NZ is the major producer of official statistics in New Zealand. We keep New Zealanders informed about changes in our society, economy, and environment. We also lead the Official Statistics System (OSS). Through the OSS we ensure that an efficient and coordinated statistics system is in place across all government agencies.
We collect, compile, analyse, and communicate information on a wide range of social and economic matters. We produce statistics almost every working day. These statistics include such vital measures of our economy as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Consumers Price Index (CPI), as well as a vast range of other statistics including results from the five-yearly Census of Population and Dwellings.
Our statistics help governments, community organisations, businesses, industry organisations, academics, and others to understand our society and economy and to make key decisions.
Producing quality statistics requires the cooperation and goodwill of people and organisations who supply information.
Our commitment to you
- we will value your time and ask for information only when your involvement is important
- we will treat you with respect
- we will explain how we will use the information we collect before you share your information with us
- we will listen, and respond quickly and fairly to any issue that you raise
- we will keep the information about your business secure and confidential.
How you can help us
To help us produce high quality statistics, we ask that you:
- cooperate with our request for information
- provide accurate answers to questions (we accept careful estimates where there is no alternative)
- provide the information by the due date.
Most businesses provide information willingly as they realise the importance of high-quality business and economic statistics.
Under the provision of the Statistics Act 1975, if you are asked in writing to provide information you are legally obliged to do so.
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Minimising costs to business
In any given year, we conduct a wide range of business surveys on various topics at varying frequencies (eg monthly, quarterly, and annually). The businesses selected to take part in our surveys are asked to participate in as few surveys as possible.
We make every effort to minimise the cost to the business community by:
- using alternative sources of information, where possible
- seeking information in a way that is consistent with the record-keeping practices of most businesses, or notifying you in advance if the survey involves your business keeping special records
- testing our questions with businesses before running a survey to ensure that the questions are clear, easy to understand, and able to be answered
- assessing the likely time commitment on businesses before implementing a new survey
- asking only a sample of businesses to complete forms for most surveys.
We request data from small and medium-size businesses (SMEs) for a limited number of surveys. If we select your business for one of our surveys, it is very important that you respond as fully as possible because you are representing other businesses of similar size and activity.
However, for some surveys and for some industries, eg the Quarterly Manufacturing Survey, we need to include all relevant businesses to produce reliable results. Larger businesses are likely to be selected for a greater proportion of surveys than SMEs, due to their significance to the industries they operate in and to the New Zealand economy.
Contact us
We welcome contact from you. If you have any feedback about our surveys or general inquiries you can contact us by phone, email, fax, or letter during normal business hours.
This Charter for Business Surveys is reviewed regularly and updated if necessary. We monitor our performance against this charter and it is publicly reported in our annual report.
Date of publication: September 2009