User:Malcolmxl5/Kuzmicich

Stephen Slavo Raphael Kuzmicich, known as Steve Kuzmicich, was born on 2 November 1931 at the family home in Napier, New Zealand, the son of Stjepan Kuzmicich, an immigrant from Croatia, and Mona Smeyah who was of Danish, Lebanese and Italian descent. He attended the local Catholic convent school in Napier and completed his secondary education at St Patrick’s College after the Kuzmicich family moved to Wellington in 1939. Unable to afford a course on electrical engineering at the University of Canterbury, he studied Maths and Physics at the Victoria University of Wellington

Kuzmicich joined the Department of Census and Statistics in 1954 and was promoted rapidly becoming Divisional Director in 1960, Assistant Government Statistician in 1964, Deputy Government Statistician in 1978 and Government Statistician in 1984. He retired in December 1991.

He began his career in the Department by developing methodology for working life tables, a method of analysing participation in the labour force pioneered by New Zealand. He was instrumental in introducing the then new technique of statistical sampling for the production of short term economic indicators and social statistics. In the 1960s, computerisation.

became Divisional Director, responsible for machine data processing (punch card based), when the 1956 Population and Dwelling Census was still being processed. At the time the Census took four years to process on these ICT punch card machines.


 * computerisation
 * integrated statistical system
 * marketing