data.govt.nz progresses
The New Zealand Government on the 4th November 2009 announced the launch of www.data.govt.nz. Since the launch the number of data sets included on data.govt.nz has continued to grow.
The Internal Affairs Minister Nathan Guy in the press release titled: Government takes steps to demystify data states:
"This pilot website is a two-way street," says Mr Guy.
"We want to make it easier for businesses, researchers, analysts and journalists - in fact, anyone with an interest in information - to access the data they need.
"At the same time, users can discuss data and offer suggestions about the website to help the Department of Internal Affairs fine-tune the project to make it as user-friendly as possible."
Mr Guy says the website will act as a catalogue for all publicly-available government data.
"The country's government departments are producing a lot of interesting and useful information, but it's spread among numerous websites, making it difficult for people to gain a clear idea of what's available.
"I'm of the view the government's data should be used to promote business and knowledge."
Mr Guy says the new website underscores the government's commitment to supporting open data for use by all New Zealanders.
"Businesses can use the data to better inform their work and help boost the economy. This website gives the public a great opportunity to tell the government what they think about the information out there and how the relevance and accessibility of data can be improved."
On the day of the launch Open New Zealand ranked the data.govt.nz and states:
“How well does the official portal do against Open New Zealand’s requirements?
- Collaborative: I believe that they aggregate from the Open New Zealand catalogue. ✔
- Open: They do not offer bulk download of their database yet. ✘
- Open Source: They’re built on open source, but their code is not itself open sourced (yet). ½✔
- Inclusive: I see statistical profiles of councils but it is listed as maintained by Internal Affairs. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating: do they accept submissions of CRI or open local body data? ?
- Conversational: They take and encourage comments. ✔
- Internally Useful: You can’t yet browse by agency or get a feed by agency. ✘
- RESTian: URLs are programmable, though not as hierarchical as we’d like (e.g., /dia/7). ½✔
- Extensible: It is not possible to add domain-specific metadata (e.g., geographic datasets have special needs). ✘
- Open standards based: They use CC licenses, but not standard dictionaries. On the plus side, it doesn’t use proprietary formats or protocols to restrict access. ½✔
Not bad for the first release. I think that this will be one of those “release early, release often” projects we’ve been saying that government should do more of. I believe that bulk download, geo-metadata, and open source are on the work program.”
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