Stats NZ, through the Government Chief Data Steward (GCDS) is the functional lead for data and is responsible for the implementation of the Open Data Charter. MBIE and Stats NZ have agreed to continue to work together to ensure more open government data is available for the Digital Technologies sector.
Open Data Charter:
The New Zealand Government has adopted the Open Data Charter (the Charter), an international collaboration working to open up data based on a shared set of six principles.
Stats NZ has created an implementation plan focusing on Principle Four: Comparable and Interoperable. This principle is about ensuring data can be easily compared between sectors, across geographical locations, and over time. It highlights the importance of standardisation, consistent formats, accessible metadata and good documentation to enable interoperability and ease of data integration across the data system.
Principle Four, also aligns with the Government Data Strategy and Roadmap goals of “Providing the right data at the right time” and “Building the infrastructure that enables effective data management and re-use”. This strategy is currently being refreshed.
Getting access to the data you need:
If you cannot locate the government data that you need, you can make a dataset request via the request a dataset page on data.govt.nz. With your help, the team at data.govt.nz will identify and share the request with the government agency most likely responsible for that data.
A dataset request is backed by the Official Information Act (OIA). If the agency responsible for this data is subject to the Official Information Act, they are required to respond to your request within 20 working days.
Government agencies suffer from many competing priorities. Often, they want to release open data, but with limited money and hands to do the work, they need to be very strategic about which datasets to begin with. By making dataset requests and describing the potential value of that data as open data, you can help the government agency make those decisions.
