Working with Statistics

Beginnings

Statistical work has always meant collecting, analysing and presenting data. Only how this is done and the types of data collected have changed. In New Zealand's early colonial years, officials such as magistrates and policemen collected information about people and economic activities in the course of their duties. A few male clerks in the Office of the Colonial Secretary put this data together, and summarised the results on standardised forms which were bound together in volumes known throughout the British Empire as 'Blue Books'. Annual statistical reports were published from the 1850s, and from then on much effort went into checking and rechecking proofs from the Government Printer.

For a century from the 1890s, the New Zealand Official Yearbook was the main way by which statistical information was presented to the public. Many staff coordinated, updated and checked the material contributed by other government departments. In recent years much of this information has been made available online.

Collecting data

Censuses of people (and animals) required much effort. Initially, men with close knowledge of their communities, such as police and post office workers, collected data on the ground. Pre-motorised travel was hazardous, and at least one sub-enumerator suffered 'the New Zealand death', drowning while crossing a river on horseback. In the early twentieth century, agents such as grocers distributed family budget surveys. Later, information was increasingly collected by post as comprehensive coverage was replaced by sample surveys. Census forms are still delivered to every household in the country, however, and by a wide variety of methods.

Tabulation techniques

As both New Zealand's population and the complexity of the information sought grew, so did the size of the army of temporary clerks that was employed every five years by the Census and Statistics Office to process it. Sitting at long tables in large draughty or cramped rooms, they laboriously added, subtracted and calculated percentages. From the 1890s census data was written on cards which were sorted by hand. The drudgery of statistical work was gradually eased as adding and calculating machines and typewriters came into use, operated mostly by women. Tabulating machines were imported from the United States in the 1920s to process punched cards; this too was women's work.

The introduction of computers

The Census and Statistics Office employed a few economists, including the well-known J.B. Condliffe, after the First World War, but no fully qualified mathematicians until after the Second, when in-house training in statistical methods also began. By the 1960s the population census had barely been processed by the time the next one was taken five years later. Statistics acquired a second-generation IBM mainframe computer, but this was soon obsolete, and the Government Computer Centre was unable to process statistics such as the Consumers Price Index quickly enough. Since the early 1980s computing has been done in-house, and in the 1990s personal computers and the Internet revolutionised the day-to-day experience of work at Statistics New Zealand.

Working conditions

New Zealand's statistical workers have enjoyed (or endured) a wide variety of working conditions over the years. 'Highlights' have included the obsolete parliamentary boiler house; the 'dirty, dank and unsanitary hole' of the Wairarapa Farmers' Co-operative Association, which was shared with a thriving rat population; and the attic of the Public Trust building. Newer accommodation wasn't always much better: the concrete Hood's building between Lambton Quay and The Terrace in Wellington was state-of-the-art for 1925, but staff either shivered in the 'Dungeon' or sweltered on the 'Sunnyside'; the window frames soon leaked and let through draughts, and the plumbing 'went on the blink'. After decades in a growing number of rented offices of varying quality, head office at last became 'comfortably housed' when it moved into Aorangi House in Wellington in 1974.

Extra duties

Statistics staff have sometimes taken on additional duties. During the First World War, for example, several hundred temporary staff, mostly women, compiled information on every male of military service age, and carried out the periodic birthdate ballots for conscription. In the Second World War these duties were taken over by a separate National Service Department.

Staff having fun

There has always been play as well as work. A table tennis craze in the 1920s was short-lived, but sport, picnics and office parties have endured. In 1956, the newly-created Department of Statistics had only 92 male and 72 female employees. By 2000 there were nearly 900 staff, more than half of them based outside Wellington. The balance of the sexes is now virtually even.