NZ Government Opening Up Their Data

As you are probably aware the New Zealand government have, through their Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), created a one-stop-shop listing all the data accessible from government agencies. Nice.

This initiative was almost entirely driven from the awesome work of a small independent group led by Glen Barnes and Nathan Torkington (http://open.org.nz) with the Open Data Catalogue as a “one-stop shop for locating government data”.

So where is this official site: http://www.data.govt.nz/

• Browse datasets
• Add a dataset
• Suggest a dataset

They are also using Twitter to announce new data sets: @Data_Govt_NZ

Nat posted up his views on the initial release and ComputerWorld have popped up an article today. Included is this quote from the totally switched on Jason Ryan ("State Services Commission communications man") which has quickly become my favourite about 'open government data':

“It’s not about the technology. It’s not about data quality. Or privacy. Or commercial sensitivity, or any of that stuff. That should all be dealt to as part of the everyday functioning of any administration,” Ryan writes.

“It is about accepting that we, the government, collect and manage this information on behalf of citizens and that it is our fundamental responsibility to make it available to them, in a way that supports the creation of public and economic value.”

Other NZ Government information can be found at:

• Statisphere
  
• DigitalNZ
  
• National Broadband Map
  
• Open Data Catalogue
  
• Koordinates