What if a single register could track every fragment of your life — your income, your education, your health, your family connections — down to your address and beyond?
And what if this register didn’t just exist but operated as the hidden infrastructure for every future social service, government program, and even law enforcement tool?
Stats NZ insists its Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) is about better, faster, “smarter” public policy. But when you dig deeper, the dream of a so-called “One Register” begins to look less like a streamlined data solution and more like the backbone of a digitally empowered police state.
If that sounds dramatic, it’s worth remembering how power consolidates: not through brute force alone, but through information. Data is power. For example, in history, census or registration data has sometimes been used to identify targeted groups in times of conflict or persecution, showing how easily data can become a lever for state control. And a single register of everything is the ultimate prize.
From Counting to Controlling?
Stats NZ, at its roots, is a statistics agency. It counts things: populations, trade figures, census responses. But over the past decade, it has become something far more powerful, quietly assembling one of the most extensive integrated data networks in the Western world.
Their Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) already merges data from Inland Revenue, the Ministry of Education, Health NZ, Police, and the Ministry of Social Development. In other words: they know who you are, where you live, how you earn money, how you learn, whether you’ve had a hospital stay, and if you’ve ever been on a benefit or involved with the justice system.
Originally sold to the public as a “policy improvement” tool, the IDI’s mission has expanded. Stats NZ’s hints about a “One Register” — a unified data environment with a single citizen identifier — would go even further. Instead of linking data, it would be the data: one register to rule them all.
A Māori Data Cautionary Tale
You might think there are robust guardrails protecting such a massive trove of personal data. But recent controversies suggest otherwise.
During the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, data gathered under a health banner was reused for census outreach to Māori communities — without proper permission. That wasn’t just a slip-up; it revealed how easily data collected for one purpose can be re-purposed by agencies under the logic of “helping.”
For Māori, whose concept of data sovereignty is grounded in whakapapa (genealogical connections) and collective guardianship, this was a direct breach of trust. If a one-register model is imposed without Māori-led data governance, it risks repeating colonial patterns of taking, reclassifying, and using people’s knowledge and identity for state goals.
The Palantir Parallel
Here’s where the story starts to resemble something out of a surveillance-thriller. Bonnie Flaws at Reality Check Radio highlighted the role of Palantir, a controversial US data-analytics contractor with deep military and intelligence roots. Palantir has pitched its services to multiple government agencies worldwide, promising to tame sprawling data.
Centralized, linked databases are catnip for companies like Palantir. One register — neat, standardised, powerful — is a data miner’s dream. Whether or not Palantir itself gets involved, the architecture being built in New Zealand would be fully compatible with commercial surveillance systems.
You don’t need to believe in a Big Brother conspiracy to see the risk. Once such a system exists, it becomes infinitely easier for police, intelligence agencies, or “strategic partners” to plug in, query, and monitor patterns.
Whose Efficiency?
Stats NZ frames the One Register idea as “efficiency.” Less duplication, fewer errors, better public services. And sure, streamlining might sound attractive — until you realise what you’re trading away.
The more you centralise data:
- the more you risk breaches
- the more you risk misuse
- the more you encourage mission creep
And critically, the more you hand the state a tool that can be repurposed in ways you may never consent to.
Think about predictive policing, welfare fraud algorithms, even politically motivated “extremism” lists — all fuelled by the same data pipeline, under the same master register. Once the infrastructure is built, the question is no longer if it will be used, but how far it will go.
A Question of Trust
New Zealanders generally trust their public institutions. That trust is a national asset. But no amount of warm policy language should blind us to the hard question: Should we allow a single entity to consolidate this much power over our lives?
A central register is a seductive idea because it promises seamlessness. But seamless systems also erase checks and balances. They flatten our differences, subsume our stories, and risk turning our messy, human lives into standardised data rows.
Is that really the best we can do?
Reimagining Data Sovereignty
There are other ways forward. Māori frameworks of data sovereignty, built on kaitiakitanga (guardianship) and mana motuhake (self-determination), offer a radically different model. These frameworks prioritise consent, collective governance, and the right to say no when data collection crosses cultural or ethical boundaries.
Instead of a one-register monolith, why not build a pluralistic, federated data system — one with local governance, transparency, and built-in opt-outs?
That might sound slower. Messier. But sometimes messiness is what protects us from authoritarian drift.
Census: The Final Public Data Frontier
For more than a century, the census has been one of the few moments where the public meets the data machine face to face. Every five years, people are asked — in their own words, on their own terms — to declare who they are, where they live, how they live. It has been a rare act of national participation, a chance to both be counted and to challenge the story the state might otherwise tell about them.
That is about to end.
Stats NZ has confirmed that after one final round, the five-yearly traditional census will be scrapped by 2030. In its place? A constant, rolling statistical portrait built from administrative data — tax records, benefit data, health records, education files — cross-referenced and topped up with smaller, sample-based surveys.
On the surface, this is framed as efficiency: cheaper, faster, more “modern.” But efficiency for whom?
When the census disappears, so too does the last routine moment where ordinary New Zealanders can directly verify and correct what is known about them. Administrative data is not infallible. It is riddled with errors, assumptions, and gaps. Once the census is gone, the power to challenge or even see those errors will shrink dramatically.
The stakes are even higher for communities already marginalised by official data systems — Māori, Pasifika, disabled, LGBTQ+ people — whose stories have historically been undercounted or misrepresented. Without a public census, the risk is that these communities become further marginalised by algorithms that cannot see them, or worse, misclassify them.
And there’s a deeper cultural loss here. Census participation is one of the only collective, civic rituals left in a society increasingly divided and digitised. It asks us, as a country, to look in the mirror every five years. To speak for ourselves. To be part of something bigger.
Replacing that with a passive data-gathering regime may look tidy on a spreadsheet. But in reality, it hands even more power to invisible systems, and takes away one of the last moments of transparency between citizen and state.
If you never ask people directly, you can build a data model of them without their knowledge, let alone their consent. And in a world already rushing toward a “One Register,” maybe that’s precisely the point.
Final Thought
Stats NZ’s “One Register” is a siren song of efficiency and control. It is not hard to imagine how the system, once built, could become a backbone of an all-seeing, algorithm-driven society.
The road to a police state is rarely signposted. It is built, brick by brick, register by register, in the name of “helping” us.
Maybe it’s time we asked — helping who? And what should we do about it? Perhaps it is time to demand public oversight, push for transparency, or question the politicians building this digital Leviathan before it is too late.
Further Reading
Privacy Commissioner: Data Integration and Privacy
URL: https://www.privacy.org.nz/privacy-principles/
This is the official page of New Zealand’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner, detailing the 13 Information Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act 2020. It outlines how personal data must be collected, stored, used, shared, and disposed—with specific protections around accuracy and cross-border disclosure.
The Commissioner also publishes Codes of Practice for high-risk domains such as health, justice, and unique identifiers.
– Guidance is regularly updated—including frameworks for AI systems and expectations around data breach notifications.
Why it’s essential reading: While these safeguards are robust on paper, critics argue they may not fully cover centralized systems like the One Register—where layered administrative data, algorithmic decision-making, and limited public visibility push the boundaries of what these principles anticipate.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
By Shoshana Zuboff
URL: https://criticalmindshift.com/surveillance-capitalism-book-review/
Published in January 2019, Zuboff’s tome delves into the emergence of “surveillance capitalism”, where Big Tech firms turn everyday human behavior—your clicks, your movements, your likes—into raw material for predictive products and profit.
The book argues that this practice establishes a new form of instrumentarian power, one that manipulates individuals and shapes society without democratic oversight.
A broader audience review from The New Yorker calls it a “masterwork”—a compelling challenge to the idea that surveillance is merely a byproduct of digital life.
Why it’s essential reading: Zuboff’s analysis provides a powerful lens for interpreting Stats NZ’s One Register—not simply as a data infrastructure, but as a potential node in a wider ecosystem of data extraction and control, where everyday information becomes a commodity.
Image acknowledgement
The feature image on this page is by Andreus. Check out their work on Depositphotos.com.
