14 June 2022
45 Pipitea Street, Wellington 6011
Phone +64 4 495 7200
dia.govt.nz
R Bailey
fyi-request-19348-
[email address]
Tēnā koe R Bailey
OIA request 21/22 0771 Request for death data
Thank you for your Official Information Act (Act) request received by the Department of Internal
Affairs (Department) on 16 May 2022.
You requested –
•
the delay/difference between the date of death registrations and the date of occurrence
of deaths for the period 2018 - 2022 (current data).
•
weekly statistics for the 2018 - 2022 (current data) period for death registration.
•
a list of any Key Performance Indicators for the staff registering deaths. ( e.g. time
between recieving death registration form details and death declaration/certification)
I note you also made a request to Statistics New Zealand for any data they held on the time lag
between date of death occurrence and date of death registration for the New Zealand
population.
As advised in an email to you from Statistics New Zealand on 24 May 2022, this was transferred
to our Department for response pursuant to section 14(b)(i) of the Act; the information to which
the request relates is not held by the department or venture or Minister of the Crown or
organisation but is believed by the person dealing with the request to be held by another
department.
After having requested that you clarify the data portion of your request, you advised in an email
of 27 May 2022 –
I would like data which has the following (anonymised data);
- date of death
- date of submission
- date the death is actually registered
For each death since 1 Jan 2018 until the latest available data.
(e.g column headings are ID, death_date, submission-date, registration_date)
I am not seeking an average for each year.
I would like to work out the distribution for time between date of death to death registration.
(For example 25% are <7 days after death, 25% 7-12 days, 25% 12-21 days 25% >21 days).
If there are 2022 deaths that are submitted, but yet to be registered it would be great to have
that info as well.
In response to your request I can provide you with the following information.
I can confirm that there is one Statement of Service Performance (SSP) for death registrations.
This SSP is that 99% of death information is registered within an average of two working days. I
note that this is the time between the Department receiving the registration to the point it is
registered in the system.
I must advise that over 150,000 death records fell within the data portion of your request. We
have therefore prepared the below two tables, providing the information you advised you were
hoping to determine with the data you had requested, in lieu of a list of the individual records.
This first table shows a breakdown of the number of calendar days taken from the date of death
to the date they were registered between 1 January 2018 to 31 May 2022.
Days after death
Frequency
Percent
Less than 3 days
5,153
3%
3 days - 7 days
58,641
39%
7 days - 12 days
69,554
46%
13 days - 21 days
12,796
8%
Greater than 21 days
4,572
3%
To give an idea of our processing times, this second table shows a breakdown of the number of
working days taken from when the Department received death registrations until they were
registered between 1 January 2018 and 31 May 2022.
Days after Received
Frequency
Percent
Less than 3 days
146,532
97.2%
3 days - 7 days
2,763
1.8%
7 days - 12 days
818
0.5%
13 days - 21 days
328
0.2%
Greater than 21 days
275
0.2%
I note that as at 31 May 2022, there were 38 death registrations received between 1 January
2022 and 31 May 2022 that were not yet registered.
Caveat
Death registration data is entered manually which may impact the accuracy of this data.
Therefore, although it has been collated to the best of our ability, it may have a small variance
to any alternative publications.
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As this information may be of interest to other members of the public, the Department has
decided to proactively release a copy of this response on the DIA website. All requestor data,
including your name and contact details, will be removed prior to release. The released
response will be made available here:
https://www.dia.govt.nz/Official-Information-Act-
Requests-2.
You have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of this decision.
Information about how to make a complaint is available at www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
freephone 0800 802 602.
Ngā mihi
Julia Taylor
Manager Operational Policy and Official Correspondence
Service Delivery and Operations
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