Vision
The departments vision is "an informed society using official statistics", hoping to be "your first source of information for making key decisions" and says on its website that it "leads the collection and publicising of key information on nearly everything."
In its statement of intent, it lists statistical excellence, integrity, confidentiality and data security, leading, connecting, and communicating as its values. It says on its website: "Our highest priority is to produce relevant, accurate, and timely data with useful in-depth analysis. We aim to continually improve our technical and quality standards to foster a professional organisation and provide leadership for the Official Statistics System."
Confidentiality isn't only a policy chosen by the department, but required by law. A section of the Statistics Act 1975 reads "No information from an individual schedule is to be separately published or disclosed, except as authorised by the Statistics Act (the Act permits others to see information from an individual schedule, but only when it is in a form that prevents identification of the respondent concerned, and then only under strict security conditions). This means government can't abuse personal information from a census by revealing (or threatening to reveal it) for dubious purposes. A particular person's income responses can't be handed over to a tax collection agency, for example.
The agency maintains an open copyright policy stating that "information obtained from Statistics New Zealand may be freely used, reproduced, or quoted unless otherwise specified" with the caveat that "in all cases Statistics New Zealand must be acknowledged as the source."
A training program was established to encourage college graduates to consider a career at the agency. This program is called the Graduate Leadership Development Programme (gLDP, sometimes gDLP). It features social and technical support networks, monthly workshops, peer-mentoring, action learning groups, team corporate projects, and rotations through different departments. It seeks graduates skilled at communicating and analyzing and working with people, and hires approximately ten to fifteen graduates each year.
Read more about this topic: Statistics New Zealand
Famous quotes containing the word vision:
“I have always fought for ideas—until I learned that it isn’t ideas but grief, struggle, and flashes of vision which enlighten.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)
“For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities—a willing movement of a man’s soul with the larger sweep of the world’s forces—a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I had a vision of them put together
Not like a man, but like a chandelier.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)