(Picture caption: Have your say on the Ministry for Pacific Peoples’ Long-term Insights Briefing HERE.)
The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is the voice of Pacific peoples in government, and our voice comes from our Pacific communities.
Our role is to improve Pacific outcomes by working alongside our communities to achieve their vision of a thriving, resilient and prosperous Pacific Aotearoa.
We do this by building relationships, knowledge and expertise to better connect Pacific peoples and government.
The Long-term Insights Briefing (LTIB) is a new government requirement under the Public Service Act 2020.
It requires agencies and government departments to think about issues in the medium to long term future, and examine future trends, risks and opportunities that could affect Aotearoa New Zealand.
We are inviting the public to provide feedback on the Ministry’s Long-term Insights Briefing: Improving Pacific data equity – opportunities to enhance the future of Pacific wellbeing.
Our topic, Improving Pacific data equity: Opportunities to enhance the future of Pacific wellbeing, explores government’s current data eco-system and how past and present ways of collecting, processing, analysing and interpreting data has led to inequities for Pacific peoples.
It also identifies three focus areas to achieve data equity for Pacific peoples to enhance the wellbeing of our communities.
As part of developing our LTIB, MPP is required to undertake two rounds of public consultation to ensure our final LTIB reflects public views – the first on the proposed topic, and the second on the detailed LTIB content.
In November 2021, MPP consulted publicly on its proposed LTIB topic.
Since then, MPP has prepared a briefing on this topic, and now share it to hear your views.
The data used in government is mainly collected through the national census, government surveys, administrative data, and government research.
In government, data is used to inform decision making including what public goods and services to invest in, policy making, programme interventions and future planning.
While it is a critical resource in informing government decisions, there are issues with the way data about Pacific communities is collected, analysed, used, and produced which has led to persistent inequities for Pacific peoples.
Some of these issues include the lack of Pacific worldviews in data design, an undercount of Pacific peoples in official statistics, and an underrepresentation of Pacific data professionals.
What we have heard is these inequities mean stories the data tells do not represent the realities experienced by Pacific peoples.
Pacific data equity is therefore about ensuring the definition of Pacific data and its collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of information and narratives about Pacific peoples accurately reflects them and their experiences.
Importantly, this briefing identifies some critical steps that can be taken to achieve data equity for Pacific peoples to enhance the future wellbeing of our communities.
We consider that to achieve data equity for Pacific peoples and to enhance the wellbeing of our communities we need to focus on:
Now we are seeking the public’s views through this second round of public consultation, and the feedback received through this consultation will help MPP to inform the final LTIB, which will be submitted to Parliament.
Visit the MPP website to read the briefing and have your say. Public consultation closes on December 11, 2022.