The New Zealand Institute
NZahead is a report card of New Zealand’s social, economic, and environmental wellbeing. We are measuring performance so New Zealanders can improve it.
There’s an old saying that ‘what gets measured gets managed’.
Single measures (such as Gross Domestic Product per capita) are really important, but they can never tell the whole story. New Zealanders need to understand that whole story if we’re going to be able to identify linkages, set priorities and make good choices.
The NZahead report card therefore seeks to arm New Zealanders with a big picture view of our overall, long-term performance – social, economic, and environmental.
The NZahead project is meant to stimulate better conversations between all New Zealanders about what is important and what we should do about it.
Sixteen measures were selected in search of a balance between capturing enough information to make broad judgments about New Zealand’s performance, without capturing so much that the details are overwhelming.
The measures have to be relevant to the quality of life of New Zealanders. The report card must include measures from the social, environmental and economic dimensions to provide a balanced view of all strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. There have to be some flow measures (such as GDP per capita) as well as some stock measures (such as household wealth) to reflect the balance between now and the future.
The measures should be reliable and accurate, and they should be frequently updated with long time series.
And we prefer measures that have direct international comparisons.
In the video clip below Lloyd Morrison describes his objectives in attempting to measure New Zealand's progress.
Not all of the measures meet every criterion. But taken as a whole we think they give a fair and balanced view of the state of New Zealand. As a result of including the measures in NZahead we hope performance on some measures will improve as more attention is directed to changing outcomes.
The entire purpose of NZahead is to encourage better conversations between New Zealanders about the country’s choices. In part that is about more and better information but it is also about having a robust dialogue. One idea or perspective is put forward, followed by counter-arguments, other ideas, questions and challenges. Strong opinion and disagreement is a sign of a democratic society’s strength and vitality, not weakness, so long as it is done respectfully.
Have we got the right measures? Should we add some, which will require deleting others? What is causing the improvement or decline in a particular measure? How are they inter-related? And what was the Institute thinking when it gave that overall grade?
We would love for you to agree or disagree about any of it. You can provide feedback through the facebook page or directly to staff via email. The most important question is the overall grade for New Zealand and you can share your view at the website, or through the facebook page.
Why is it important for you to grade New Zealand yourself? There are two good reasons:
The 16 measures are likely to be moving in different ways over time – better or worse, faster or slower. Each has different causes that create those effects, but there are also deep connections among them that play out over time: environmental performance, for example, is eventually going to show up in economic performance.
The overall grade from the Institute is a subjective judgment of what the 16 measures mean when viewed together over the long-term.
In the video below Institute Member Don Elder shares his perspective on New Zealand's future and potential benefits and uses of the NZahead project.
We are not expert in all of the specialised areas reported in the measures. No doubt there are ways our interpretation or communication can be improved. You may even know of sources of international comparisons we have been unable to find. If you have a suggestion for improving the content of NZahead we welcome your input. Please contact us.
Link with the NZahead site:
The NZahead linking logo and HTML source code below are provided for web designers and developers creating or modifying sites of relevance or partners wishing to provide a link to the NZahead website.
To do this, please either:
Copy the HTML code provided and paste it into your partner site - this will pull the logo image directly from our server (this is our preferred option), or
Download the logo image (right click and “Save image as…” for use on your partner site, and make it link to http://www.nzinstitute.org/index.php/nzahead/ 
We couldn’t have done this without help from many individuals and organisations who freely shared their information, advice and passion for New Zealand. But we are responsible for the judgements and any errors.
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