Our purpose

The ABS purpose is to inform Australia's important decisions by partnering and innovating to deliver relevant, trusted, objective data, statistics and insights.

Our role

The ABS is Australia’s national statistical agency, providing trusted official statistics on a wide range of economic, social, population and environmental matters of importance to Australia.

• providing the statistical information that Australia needs
• responding to the changing information priorities of our stakeholders
• enhancing the ways that we interact with our stakeholders
• developing and maintaining community trust, which is fundamental to our ability to collect high quality information
• enabling effective and safe use of our statistics
• coordinating and advising official bodies on statistics, including developing, and ensuring compliance with, statistical standards
• fulfilling our role as an Accredited Integrating Authority
• building our capacity to take advantage of opportunities, such as advances in technology, big data, and use of administrative information for statistical purposes
• ensuring cost-effective operations, including better utilising existing information, collecting information more efficiently, streamlining processes, and reducing the impact on those who provide statistical information.

Transforming for the future

We operate in a dynamic environment. New technology, statistical methods and new opportunities for accessing and integrating data are becoming available, increasing the potential to provide new insights into matters of importance to Australians.

In response to this, we are undergoing a major transformation which is changing how we operate as an organisation, our statistical infrastructure, our people and culture, and the statistical solutions we deliver.