The New Zealand Government has released a Declaration on open and transparent government. In a joint announcement by the Minister of Finance and Minister of Internal Affairs Finance Minister Bill English says: "Today the Government is releasing a declaration that clearly sets out our expectation that agencies should release all non-personal and unclassified data with high potential value for re-use."

Read the full Declaration here and the Cabinet Paper and Cabinet Minute here.

The Government of New Zealand has also released the New Zealand Data and Information Management Principles.They state that data and information must be open, trusted and authoritative, well managed, readily available, without charge where possible and re-usable. Personal and classified information must be protected.

The Government has also updated principles for managing government-held data and information to include:

• Government data should be released proactively in accessible formats and licensed for re-use unless there are good reasons not to.
• Information should be well managed, trusted and authoritative.
• Data should be free, or where fees are necessary, reasonably priced.
• Personal and classified data or information will remain protected.

Implementation of the Declaration and Principles

Agencies will commit to releasing high value public data actively for re-use, in accordance with the declaration and the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing (NZGOAL) Review and Release process.

Public data refers to non-personal and unclassified data.

The Declaration applies to all public service departments, the New Zealand Police, the New Zealand Defence Force, the Parliamentary Counsel Office, and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. Government is also encouraging State Services agencies and inviting State Sector agencies and the local government sector to adopt this approach.

The Data and Information Re-use Chief Executives Steering Group is sponsoring a programme of guidance and advice to support agencies manage and release their data and information. This is being developed by the Open Government Data and Information Working Group.

Chief Executives will submit their plans to actively release public data to portfolio Ministers for approval. The Data and Information Re-use Chief Executives Steering Group will report the aggregate plans annually to the Ministerial Committee on Government ICT.