Why the data was collected
Archives New Zealand regulates public offices and local authorities’ information management practice under the Public Records Act 2005 (PRA). A significant focus for us this year has been the reinstatement of our annual in-depth survey of public sector information management. Our goal in implementing the Survey of public sector information management is to collect quantitative and qualitative data about information management (IM) practice in the New Zealand public sector, i.e. public offices and local authorities. The purpose of gathering and publishing this data is also to support continuous improvement of information management practice. This survey provides baseline data for comparison in the coming years.
We will deliver the survey annually to develop longitudinal data and knowledge about how IM practice in the public sector evolves.
The survey results will:
- provide a whole-of-system view of IM in the public sector
- be able to be used by organisations as a self-assessment to benchmark their IM performance
- feed into our ongoing monitoring and reporting activities, and
- enable us to identify gaps in advice, guidance and education, and plan service delivery.
How the data was collected
The data was collected through the survey of public sector information management 2020-21 rolled-out between 08/06 and 25/07/2021. Using a direction to report (section 31 of the PRA), we mandated public offices to respond to the survey. Local authorities were invited to respond too but were not mandated to do so. We sent the survey using SurveyMonkey to 258 organisations, including 180 public offices and 78 local authorities. The survey recorded an 89.7% response rate.
How the data was cleaned-up
The published dataset is a modified version of the full dataset extracted from Survey Monkey. The modifications involved:
- Removal of incomplete and duplicate responses
- Removal of individual respondents’ names and contact details
- Numbering of the questions as they appeared in the questionnaire, to facilitate re-use
- Cleansing of punctuation that was corrupted during export, e.g. macrons.
Limitations
Organisations where ‘Other' response checked and converted to 'State sector'. Although term technically incorrect for some organisations, this data point equates to 'public office' for the purposes of analysis.
Some organisations submitted changes to some of their responses after the survey close-off. Changes entered manually into the dataset.
