CivicNZ charter

How we score a promise

The Promises Tracker is a newsroom desk, not a campaign tool. The same rules apply to every party. We publish the quote, the URL, and the date — or we leave the status alone and mark the record Unverified.

Version 2023-mvp-5

Principles

01CivicNZ is non-partisan. The same status rules apply to every party and to the coalition as a whole.
02A promise is a verbatim quote from an official public source, with a URL and a date. We do not paraphrase the commitment.
03We do not invent statuses. Status is derived from the published rule in civicnz_api.promises.status_rules — the same function for every party.
04Government action-plan checklists and quarterly press releases are claims. They can move a status to in progress; they cannot, on their own, mark delivered.
05Delivered requires a dated official instrument that implements the quoted commitment — an Act or Order on legislation.govt.nz.
06Broken is used when a sourced deadline has passed and the sourced target was not met. It is not reserved for a human editor.
07A kept negative commitment (the standing law is unchanged) is kept, not not-started.
08Where a policy area overlaps the NZ Index (health, housing, safety), the promise detail page shows the matching official outcome series beside the commitment. Outcome numbers do not change the status.
09The policy-to-problem score uses one published rubric for every party. It records whether a quote names a worsening or lagging series. It does not score whether a policy is good or bad.

Status rules

Not started: Not yet delivered. The commitment is on the record. No dated official source shows implementation work has begun.
In progress: Not yet delivered. A dated official source shows work that matches the quote has begun (Bill introduced, Budget line, review commissioned). A sourced deadline has not passed unmet.
Delivered: A dated official instrument implements the quoted commitment — an Act or Order on legislation.govt.nz. A commencement a few weeks after the pledged date is still delivered when the Act is the quoted plan.
Partially delivered: A bundled pledge has independently verifiable limbs. Some, but not all, are met on official evidence. The same limb rule is used for every party — including National's law-and-order bundle and ACT's Three Strikes item on the same Act.
Kept: A negative commitment is still in force on the primary statute (for example NZ Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001 s7 still sets age 65).
Broken: A sourced deadline has passed and the sourced target is still unmet, or a dated official source shows the commitment was reversed or abandoned. Late enactment of the quoted instrument is delivered, not broken.
Dropped in coalition: The coalition agreement itself records that a manifesto item will not be progressed, or replaces it with a different commitment.

What counts as evidence

Official public sources only: coalition agreements filed on government or court sites, Beehive and DPMC publications, legislation.govt.nz, Budget documents, Hansard, and official statistics.
Party websites and campaign PDFs may be used for 2026 manifesto ingest, and every extracted line is flagged for human verification.
We quote the official PDF text. Where a Waitangi Tribunal extract dropped a letter (for example “ew Zealand”), we restore the word from the same document and note the extract.
Personal names of CivicNZ operators are not published. The brand is CivicNZ / CivicIQ.

Corrections

Site-wide corrections, including this tracker, are on the public corrections log.

Email hello@civicnz.org with the promise id, the status you think is wrong, and a dated official URL (legislation, Budget, Hansard, or official statistics).
CivicNZ will add the evidence, keep the previous status in the history, and reply with the outcome.
Anonymous partisan talking points, social posts, and unsourced tallies are not accepted as evidence.
If two official sources conflict, both are published and the status stays flagged for human verification.

Policy-to-problem completeness rubric

Policy-to-problem completeness rubric · 2026-10-draft-1 · draft

Applied to National, ACT, NZ First, Coalition government. Areas: Health, Housing, Safety, Affordability, Wellbeing.

01CivicNZ is non-partisan. The same rubric is applied to National, ACT, NZ First, and the coalition government.
02This score records completeness of the public record. It does not say whether a policy is good or bad, adequate or inadequate, or likely to work.
03A problem is a series that is worsening, lagging an official target or band, or recorded as an official missed milestone. A series that has met its official target is not scored as a problem.
04A policy targets a problem only when the verbatim quote names that series or the official target the series reports against. Related policies that do not name the series are shown as not addressed.
05Every yes, no, or not addressed result is linked to a word-for-word quote and a dated official URL.
06Not addressed is a first-class result. It is shown in those words. It is not a zero, a fail, or a hidden row.
07Criteria met is a count of the five completeness checks. It is not a quality grade, star rating, or league table.
08Unverified tracker statuses are shown, not hidden. They do not become delivered.
09Official public sources only. CivicNZ does not invent a percentage when an official sentence records a missed milestone without publishing the figure.
10Current official policies means the 2023 coalition agreements and government action-plan clauses already in this tracker. A party website page that is not in the catalogue is not scored.

Targets the problem: Yes if at least one official quote from that party (party field or also_parties) names the series or the official target the series reports against. Otherwise not addressed.
Measurable target: Yes if a targeting quote has a measurable_target on the tracker record. No if the quote names the problem but sets no measurable target. Not addressed if no quote names the problem.
Funding identified: Yes if a targeting quote contains a dollar figure, or an attached evidence row has kind budget. No if the quote names the problem but no funding is identified. Not addressed if no quote names the problem.
Timeline: Yes if a targeting quote or its measurable_target names a year, a calendar date, “two years”, “every year”, or “per annum”. No if the quote names the problem but sets no timeline. Not addressed if no quote names the problem.
Delivery track record: The tracker status of the targeting promise, with its evidence URL. Unverified is labelled. Not addressed if no quote names the problem.

Not a judgement that a policy is good or bad.
Not a prediction that a target will be met.
Not a league table. Parties are listed in a fixed order: National, ACT, NZ First, Coalition government.
Not a substitute for the tracker status rules. Delivery still requires a dated official instrument.

Open the policy-to-problem score

Health, housing and safety commitments also appear on the NZ Index. Each overlapping promise detail page shows the matching official series beside the quote. The numbers do not change the status. Affordability and wellbeing are scored against official series on the policy-to-problem pages.

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