GIS at the Ministry of Social Development

Author: Beth-Anne Lee
Date: 24 November 2009

At the Ministry of Social Development we regularly use GIS to analyse, inform and visualise data. GIS is a relatively new tool in the organisation and we are still exploring how to realise its full power and capabilities. People all across the Ministry are often surprised and impressed with the added benefits location intelligence provides, frequently exceeding their expectations of simple paper maps and charts.

The New Zealand Geospatial Strategy is one way in which GIS can expand and grow a greater audience by allowing spatial data to be shared between government departments. A forum like this provides us with an opportunity to inform others of the work we currently do in the hope that it will foster collaboration.

The recent economic downturn has increased interest in understanding where the growing numbers of unemployed people are concentrated, and how we can ensure our resources are well positioned to provide help where it is needed. MSD's Work and Income has been proactive about trying to redirect its services and resources as more current information about the location of need becomes available. This is where spatial analysis has come unto its own. Decision makers used mapping scenarios to determine potential boundary realignments for service centre catchments. At a glance, the decision makers were able to see where to shift clients from an overburdened service centre to one more capable of dealing with extra demand. Work in this area illustrated the importance of geocoding client information, then mapping Work and Income clients to better understand the impact of the economic downturn on service centres. Without GIS to visually interpret the data, decisions like these may have taken a lot longer.

The Ministry has a front line geocoding system that allows the service centre and call centre staff to update address information whenever contact is made with clients, who will include Work and Income benefit/supplement recipients, NZ Super recipients and Child, Youth and Family clients. Benefit and NZ Super recipients alone include nearly one million active clients. The geocoding hit rate is on average between 85% and 90%. The geocoded database is then combined to produce maps showing the distribution of clients by categories such as benefit type, ethnicity, age, and benefit duration. These maps are used for project planning and implementation as well as for informing the Minister of current trends. As is often the case, the client data alone is not enough to paint an entire picture and other data sets like the Department of Labour Industry data, Statistics New Zealand demographics, the University of Otago Index of Deprivation and the New Zealand Police family violence data are used to view trends above and beyond what the numbers show.

The Ministry also oversees a large number of government and non government funded programmes in the social sector. Determining existing funding volumes vs. client needs is a common information request. Being able to produce maps that show the distribution of programmes against our client data can be invaluable to people implementing or reviewing initiatives. Because the issue of funding can be complicated with programmes being delivered to different types of regions (for example some are targeting at a specific Territorial Authority while others might deliver services for several MSD service centres) the Funding and Contracting system has been enhanced to include a model to approximate funding for consistent geographic boundaries. This has greatly improved the ability to utilise datasets from other organisations that report by different boundaries.

Currently, MSD is set up to perform individual mapping and spatial analysis projects with work being done from a central point within the Centre for Social Research and Evaluation unit. Elsewhere in the Ministry, there is the potential to expand the use of GIS into Integrity Services to help with benefit fraud detection. For users across the Ministry, the implementation of a mapping portal has the potential to expand the use of spatial information and enhance quicker decision making. We are currently gathering support and investigating different solutions to achieve this.

If you would like more information or would like to discuss how we can work together, please contact me at beth-anne.lee007@msd.govt.nz.

Beth-Anne Lee

Senior Analyst - Geographic Information Systems
Centre for Social Research and Evaluation
Ministry of Social Development