Opening Remarks
National Environmental Reporting Forum 20 October 2009
From the National Environmental Reporting Forum 20 October 2009.
Todd Krieble
Director, Information
Ministry for the Environment
- On behalf of MfE and Stats New Zealand I would like to welcome you to the 3rd National Environmental Reporting Forum.
- The growth in interest since the first forum has been phenomenal. It shows the commitment of you as our reporting partners to what can only be achieved through collaboration.
- We have made good progress over the last two years. The geospatial work has been a big hit as have the report cards. LUCAS is now producing results and the posting of LCDB2 on koordinates.com under an attribution only creative commons licence signals the manner in which we intend to make data set as freely available as possible.
- We may benchmark well against environmental statistics and reporting internationally but we have a long way to go before we can say environmental stats are on a par with social and economic statistics.
- Telling the story from an environmental perspective can be unsettling to some because they are not used to it.
- Mark Twain is well known for his quote about “lies, damned lies and statistics”. He is less well known for a quote that I think aptly describes our present situation. He says, always do right. You will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
- If you are going to astonish people you need to be pretty sure of your ground. That is why so much of the work is below the radar, behind the scenes working to improve consistency, accuracy across the 66 data sets held by MfE, councils and other reporting partner agencies.
- I especially want to acknowledge the support of Stats New Zealand. The OSS Principles and Protocol guide the development of the environmental statistics and reporting programme. At times it is protective body armour. The OSS Principles and Protocol are an essential part of good open government. While not all environmental statistics need to have Tier 1 status, the OSS provides a direct of travel.
- In 2010 we will be working with the Minister on options to improve reporting even further. As reporting partners we will need to involve you in the process.
- We are on this journey together and I hope we make good progress today.
Last updated: 2 November 2009
