Te taunaki e anga whakamua ai te Ratonga Tūmatanui Te Taunaki Public Service Census

What is the Public Service Census?

Te Taunaki Public Service Census is a survey of New Zealand public servants working in departments and departmental agencies. It will run from 3-21 March 2025. 

The survey covers employee experiences, motivations and demographic information and gives valuable insights about capability and culture across public service organisations. It is the only way we collect information directly from public servants.  

We will be asking questions about: 

• enablers of productivity e.g. clarity of agency priorities and work objectives, manager support, impact of flexible work on productivity, team collaboration, workload and engagement 

• delivery e.g. responsiveness to customer feedback, innovation, interagency collaboration 

• good employer requirements e.g. job stress, bullying, racial and sexual harassment, discrimination 

• integrity and conduct e.g. transparency, political neutrality, free and frank advice 

• demographic characteristics not collected elsewhere e.g. age, caring responsibilities, sexual identity, religion, disabilities.

We ran the first Public Service Census in 2021 to address information gaps and strengthen our oversight role. The second Census will help us to continue to drive performance through robust data collected across the Public Service. 

Why complete the Public Service Census? 

Te Taunaki Public Service Census is an opportunity for public servants working in departments and departmental agencies to share their views about their workplace. Their feedback helps to identify strengths and opportunities for improving work practices in Public Service organisations. 

Public servants can be completely honest because they won’t be identified in any reporting from the survey. By participating, they can let leaders (in their organisation and in the Public Service) know what they think of their role, their manager and their organisation, and how it could be improved. 

It’s important that we have robust data to drive improvement across the Public Service.

We use the Public Service Census to inform work across the system and within agencies. This supports our core work such as: 

• chief executive, agency and system performance management (e.g., assessing whether an agency has the capability and culture it needs to be an effective system leader and steward, providing comparable data to inform Performance Improvement Reviews) 

• workforce policies and interventions, and 

• the guidance and support we provide on integrity matters (including supporting agency specific work through our network of Integrity Champions) 

Our role in collecting and publishing information ensures that the public has information readily accessible about the performance of agencies. 

We follow the model used in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada who regularly survey their public service workforces. This is more cost effective than individual agencies running their own surveys due to economies of scale and the ability to benchmark by using a consistent set of questions for all agencies. 

How is the survey funded? 

We fund participation for all staff of departments and departmental agencies. Crown agents and non-Public Service departments can self-fund if they would like to participate later in the year.

Participants’ privacy is paramount. Te Taunaki Public Service Census responses are grouped and included in summary reporting at the agency and system level. Individuals are not identified in any reporting. Read more about how we protect your privacy here:

Privacy summary for Te Taunaki Public Service Census 2025

The information is collected securely by Research New Zealand whose Security Policy and Practices meet the requirements set out in the New Zealand Information Security Manual. 

New Zealand Information Security Manual — gcsb.govt.nz   

We securely store an anonymised version of the data in our internal system. 

The 2025 questionnaire will be published at the same time as the results.

The 2021 questionnaire is published on our website here:

Questionnaire — Te Taunaki Public Service Census 2021

For information on the methodology of the 2021 survey, including development, testing, participation rates, and margin of error, read the Technical Report prepared by our research provider, Research New Zealand. 

Technical Report — Te Taunaki Public Service Census 2021

If you have questions about Te Taunaki Public Service Census, contact us at census@publicservice.govt.nz.