Objective 1: Encourage and educate for a non-disabling society.
Objective 6: Foster an aware and responsive public service.
Objective 10: Collect and use relevant information about disabled people and disability issues.

Government agencies need to think about disability in the work they do. This means making sure they have good information about disabled people and disability issues, and sound frameworks for thinking about how changes they propose to make will affect disabled people.

Some examples of how government agencies are making sure they are able to do this include:

• Developing disability awareness – e.g. the Ministry of Transport is planning a new quality assurance tool which will provide consistency across its thinking frameworks (ensuring there is reference to the New Zealand Disability Strategy and the disability perspective in guidelines for policy development).
• Changing long-established policies – e.g. Inland Revenue is reviewing the nominated person’s procedure for disabled people – this is where a disabled person can nominate someone to act on their behalf including appropriate consultation.
• Introducing best practice guidelines – e.g. the State Services Commission is working to ensure the accessibility of government websites – its Web Standards encourage website content that is accessible to all New Zealanders regardless of their impairment, use of the latest technology, and the availability of fast internet connections.
• Gathering data on disability and disabled people – e.g. Statistics New Zealand is compiling results from the 2006 Disability Survey. This is the third time the survey has been run. It collects information on how many people have impairments, the types of impairments they have, the severity and cause of the impairments, current and unmet needs for services and assistance, employment, transport, education, accommodation and special equipment. The information is used by government departments and disability service providers to review the effectiveness of services for people with disability and to help guide the development of new services.
• Doing research into disabled people’s experiences – e.g. the Ministry of Social Development is working on the Costs of Disability Research project. This is designed to improve knowledge about the extra costs associated with disability in New Zealand, and how costs vary because of individual needs and circumstances.
• Doing more research – e.g. the Ministry of Social Development has reported on Living Standards and Disability – this analysed data collected in the 2004 Living Standards Survey. It describes the economic standard of living of people across a spectrum of disability severity for the whole working-age population, and for subgroups defined by family type.