This privacy impact assessment assesses the implications for acquiring anonymised, aggregated cardholder transaction data on New Zealanders' overseas travel expenditure.
Download the document below, or read the recommendations and summary online.
Recommendations from Stats NZ's privacy team
There are two recommendations for acquiring anonymised, aggregated cardholder transaction data on New Zealanders' overseas travel expenditure.
Stats NZ should ensure communications to cardholders contain appropriate information and are published in a timely manner.
Furthermore, before removing or archiving any data or information, Stats NZ staff should contact its Data and Information team.
Summary
Stats NZ currently estimates the expenditure of New Zealand short-term travellers overseas on a quarterly basis using a data model.
This travel expenditure ('travel imports') is a component of New Zealand's imports of services that measures spending by New Zealand residents who travel to a non-resident economy and stay for less than one year. It covers credit and debit card spending on goods and services (for example, accommodation, meals, entertainment, transportation, and retail within the economy visited) acquired for their own use, or for others when visiting a non-resident economy.
Travel imports expenditure contributes to the services component of Stats NZ's current account within the balance of payments statistics. It features a breakdown between business and personal travel. Travel imports expenditure is also used in the estimation of gross domestic product, including household consumption expenditure, within national accounts statistics.
The current travel imports model is created from weighting models utilising different datasets:
- aggregate credit card transactions (taken from the Reserve Bank website)
- aggregate debit card transactions (taken from the Survey of Debit Transactions sent to five major banks)
- the use of resident arrivals and departures information.
Consistent with its strategic priority to become an organisation that uses administrative data first, Stats NZ is exploring the potential of DOT Loves Data (DOT)-held anonymised, aggregated ANZ cardholder transaction data. This would serve as an input in supporting research to modernise our current travel imports measurement approach and production of key macroeconomic statistics.
Stats NZ has worked with DOT to determine the required and relevant dataset variables to support our statistical and research purposes.
ISBN 978-1-991307-60-6 X (online)
