Our purpose

Figure.NZ’s mission is to get the people of New Zealand using data to thrive.

We do this because we want to live in a country where everyone can take part in creating a delightful New Zealand. We believe we can make progress towards that by helping everyone understand the things they care about, so they can make great choices.

We make it easy for everyone to find and use our country’s numbers for free, through our website, as well as helping people learn how to use those numbers in their day to day lives.

We believe data isn’t just for experts, and that everyone can use numbers — including you!

Why now?

Before the 2000s, it was hard for people to share information and to communicate widely. This shaped the world we lived in. The best future was created by having a few great leaders — of countries, of companies and of communities. It made sense that those leaders had information delivered directly to them to digest, consider, and make plans for the future.

Communicating was expensive and time-consuming. Mass-communication like engaging with communities was largely limited to convincing others about decisions that had already been made and mobilising their support. This required communication that lacked nuance — it had to be clear, simple, and unambiguous. There was no space for sharing all the information and thought processes that went into making decisions.

That world no longer exists. Now it’s easy to share incredibly rich, deep information, and to communicate with many people at once across huge distances.

This fundamentally changes how we can organise ourselves and make decisions. The future can now be created with everyone making great, informed decisions in all areas of their lives. We can all help shape the direction of our businesses, our communities, and our country.

There are many factors that go into making great decisions. These include knowing how to ask good questions, how to listen to those who have important lessons to share with us, and listening to our instincts. One factor that’s really important is data; specifically, information expressed as numbers.

Everyone can use data

Each of us only sees a tiny slice of the world. Measurements and numbers enable us to interpret patterns and trends that are broader and deeper than anything we can directly experience. This includes seeing how the country’s active sand dune extent has declined since the 1950s.

Or what percentage of people felt lonely most or all of the time in each region.

Data challenges us to pop up from our individual vantage points and see more clearly what’s around us. It enables us to understand how our experiences may be different from others. Although numbers alone don’t solve anything, they’re a vital piece of the puzzle — and working with data is often a good first step to understanding a situation’s context and complexity.

Yet few New Zealanders use data. Tens of thousands of datasets offer insights into the nation’s health and wellbeing, but they’re difficult to find and too hard to use for most people.

Figure.NZ exists to enable everyone to make sense of data and see Aotearoa clearly. Our dream is that when every New Zealander wants to use data, can get their hands on it, and knows how to use it effectively, the nation will be able to shift away from a culture of binary debate and arguments over what the situations are. Instead, we can debate where we want to head to and how we can get there, based on where we are now.

Frequently asked questions

Why not the Government?

Creating a data democracy requires us to pull together the data and efforts of the public sector, the private sector, and academia, and be able to try bold new approaches, move quickly and experiment. Government isn’t structured to do this, nor are they able to take an independent position.

Why are you a charity?

Being a charity is critical to our position and ability to work with others. Data providers and users need to be able to rely on our independence, motives, and priorities. It’s about trust — New Zealand is, and always will be, unashamedly Figure.NZ’s priority.

We’re like Wikipedia; important infrastructure that wouldn’t work as a government or commercial entity.

How are you funded?

Figure.NZ is funded by:

• providing commercial services to organisations who want to publish their data, or who want us to find and publish data on a particular topic, including for websites or annual reports
• support of our partners.

We also accept donations

What’s your technology?

Figure.NZ is more than the website you see at figure.nz. Behind the scenes, Figure.NZ has built a custom web application called Grace which lets us take spreadsheets of data that aren’t machine readable, and convert them into tidy, useful formats that we publish for everyone. We then use this data to create charts, maps, and other content.

Grace and figure.nz run on a bespoke technology stack, initially developed in-house as a result of a two year requirements-gathering process. Hosted on Amazon Web Services in Sydney, both applications are built using Python/Flask. Our primary data store is PostgreSQL, and search is powered by ElasticSearch. On the frontend, we use d3/vega for chart rendering, while our UI is built using React.

Make a donation

Figure.NZ is a registered charity run by The Figure.NZ Trust. The Trust charity registration number is CC48842.

Figure.NZ deeply appreciates donations or koha from people and organisations who want to support our mission.

Donations can be made by bank transfer to:

Figure.NZ Trust 38-9020-0183183-00

If you’d like a receipt for your donation for tax purposes, please email baruch.terWal@figure.nz and we’d be more than happy to provide one.

Figure.NZ’s story

Lillian Grace founded Figure.NZ in 2012 - going from concept to incorporated Trust to platform in less than a year. The initiative was originally called Wiki New Zealand, changing to Figure.NZ in 2015. The new name better reflected the goal for all New Zealanders to feel they can figure out how to use better information to make better decisions.

“Imagine if there was a place online that had all the data in simple, visual form […] A place where people could look at and understand data on a daily basis”

Lillian was Figure.NZ’s CEO until August 2019. Read Lillian’s blog post about the transition and handover of the CEO role.

Over the past 13 years, the site has had more than 10 million visits. People have explored, learned, taught, shared, and made better decisions — all with data that once felt out of reach.

In September 2025 we welcomed new Trustees: Kelly Brown (Te Atiawa, Taranaki, Te Aitanga a Māhaki) joins as incoming chair, alongside, Baruch ter Wal, and Amokura Panoho (Rangitāne me Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Tama, Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Te Ātiawa Taranaki, Ngā Ruahinerangi).

They joined Vic Crone, Trustee of 10 years, and step into roles previously held by Stephen England-Hall, Robett Hollis, and Lillian Grace.

So, Figure.NZ is stepping into a fresh chapter — shaped by the needs of now, and grounded in our same unshakable mission: to help people understand what they care about through data.

In March 2026 Ngapera Riley bade farewell to the team, and Baruch ter Wal is the interim CEO.