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Police data from crime records is, for the first time, being transferred regularly into the country's leading repository of statistics for research.
A one-off transfer of data from the National Intelligence Application went to Stats NZ back in 2018.
This gave it a snapshot in time with the Integrated Data Infrastructure or IDI, which provides anonymised stats for researchers.
"This year we set up a system for the ongoing collection and integration of that subset of data into the IDI," Stats NZ said.
The first lot went into the database in June. From now on, that will occur three times a year.
Police first had to determine what would be appropriate for researchers to see, Stats NZ said.
The NIA holds records about offences and incidents reported to police as well as intelligence notes, with data about vehicles, people and locations, which in turn can be linked to each other.
In the IDI, the records are de-identified.
Stats NZ said research access to the Integrated Data Infrastructure was tightly controlled.
"For example, all research proposals are assessed using Stats NZ's microdata access guidelines ... and data is only used for approved statistical or research purposes for the public good."
The IDI underwent an "overarching" privacy impact assessment in 2017.
A new one would be done if there was a significant change to the variables from NIA data added to the IDI, Stats NZ said.
The Social Investment Agency - then called the Social Wellbeing Agency - talked to police in 2023 about the 2018 records in the IDI.
It was "excited about the possibilities for the updated data to strengthen our analytical work in the IDI", it said.
"We gave police a sense of the research benefits would be of updating this dataset, and they provided a sense of the logistical challenges that would need to be worked through to make this happen, but agreed on the value, and they undertook to discuss with Stats NZ what might be possible."