Ariarne Davy

(Intern at Ministry of Social Development)

Isaac Morunga

(Intern at Ministry of Education)

Cameron Crombie

(Intern at Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment)

Why did you choose to apply for the internship?

I applied for the ARG internship because wanted to use my university skills and apply them to a real-life situation, working with a dataset and answering a real problem.

I was really interested in learning more about the government sector, and was excited that my work could make a real difference to policy and people’s outcomes.

What project(s) did you working on during your internship?

During my placement at MBIE through the ARG Internship Programme, I worked on programing a data explorer called the ‘Labour Market Dashboard’, which provides up to date employment and earnings data.

Has the internship affected your career plans? If so, how? 

The ARG Internship definitely had an impact on my career plans. I enjoyed the work environment and culture in the public service so much that I ended up applying for roles within my same branch after my internship ended.

I was so excited to be offered a permanent role at MBIE, and am now working for the building and tenancy team on a project setting up a data pipeline to monitor construction sector accord outcomes and producing a dashboard for stakeholders to get updates on how accord initiatives are tracking.

Kira van Os

(Intern at Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment)

Why did you choose to apply for the internship?

I majored in statistics and environmental science for my undergraduate studies, so I was interested in an internship that would allow me to apply my statistical skills to real life problems. The ARG programme meets all of these criteria, so I knew I wanted to apply as soon as I saw it.

What project(s) did you work on during your internship?

My internship projects involved reviewing the quality of data on national energy production and consumption held within the Ministry and across government. This involved an evaluation of current methodologies and data sources, and the development of a process for ongoing monitoring of statistical quality to ensure national energy statistics remain robust and of high quality.

Has the internship affected your career plans?

The internship has helped me to confirm that I want to work in the public sector in the long term. This is thanks to my great experience at MBIE, but also the opportunities I had to meet and work with people working for other government agencies. My project was also quite different to anything I had ever done before, as most of the statistics courses I had done at university were focused on analytics and modelling.

Matthew Skiffington

(Intern at Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment)

What project(s) were you working on during your internship?

My work involved editing complex data pipelines (in R and SQL) for official statistics that feed into GDP, developing interactive apps (using Shiny) for diagnostics and exploratory analysis, reviewing literature around domestic tourism, contributing to reports, helping with data requests from policy and the public, and pitching in with the team discussions that shape and drive much of our work.

What did you enjoy about the internship?

Well, you could see the Beehive from where I worked! Seeing how other agencies operate, connecting with other students in my field and learning everyday were also huge perks of the internship. It was also great to have other students to share this journey with and bounce ideas around. It was surreal to be handling information in relation to current affairs and then literally seeing those events on the news in the evening – you can’t imagine a job more closely tied to society as a whole. 

Has the internship affected your career plans?

Significantly! I’ve worked with MBIE since my internship - the last few months have been extremely busy!

The idea of my daily job being a meaningful undertaking has always been important – and I’ve come to realise there is a tremendous amount of work happening across analytics & research in Government and are rapidly progressing and picking up many of these techniques.