31465 (2025). Francisco Hernandez to the Minister for the Public Service

31465 (2025). Francisco Hernandez to the Minister for the Public Service: How does declining to release the number of individuals shortlisted for the role of Public Service Commissioner protect the privacy of individuals given that their names have not been requested?

Hon Judith Collins: The Public Service Commission’s information release confidentiality guidelines ensure that as much high value information as possible is released, while ensuring that it is not in a form that could reasonably expect to identity an individual, or at a level of aggregation where the information is still informative. These guidelines apply to any statistical information that contains private or confidential information and therefore prevents releasing the exact number of people where there are fewer than four. While the information requested is straightforward in isolation, there is a high likelihood that people, would be able to identify individual person/s from the information if released because they would be able to combine it with other information they know. The Public Service Commission’s information confidentiality guidelines that were used in the determination of whether to release the information that was requested, have been developed consistent with the Privacy Act requirements and in consultation with Statistics New Zealand and in line with its Data Confidentiality Report.