As a result, statistical outputs were hard to interpret and the statistical series and the organisation suffered reputational damage. Operating costs rose rather than declined as expected. They say one learns better from mistakes than victories. As the euphemism goes: there were lots of learnings about risk (and project) management from the project!
The HLFS estimates employment and unemployment and is one of Statistics New Zealand’s highest priority economic data series. It is a costly collection, both in financial terms and in the burden imposed upon survey participants. Like other household surveys, it had been collected in the same manner for over 20 years. The incentives for change were considerable.