Have your say on New Zealand’s open data commitments

Land Information Minister Louise Upston is calling on Kiwis to help strengthen government policy for making government data more freely available to the public.

“We want to hear your views on whether New Zealand should adopt the International Open Data Charter, a set of global principles for making government data available to the public,” says Ms Upston.

Launched in September 2015, the Charter has been adopted by 17 countries world-wide.

“We’ve had an open data framework in New Zealand since 2011 and by international standards we’re good at it, but we can still be better.”

“The launch of the Charter last year means it’s a good time for us to look more closely at our commitments around open data and how we can strengthen them.”

“We could either join other countries in adopting the Charter, which would mean committing ourselves to all six of its principles, or alternatively we could develop our own framework that’s suitable for New Zealand”, says Ms Upston.

Anyone can share their views on this by joining discussions on the online group decision making programme, Loomio, which will be open until 30 September 2016. This can be found at: https://www.loomio.org/g/8UcXFlAg/should-new-zealand-adopt-the-open-data-charter-

“Government data is a public good, owned by the people of New Zealand, and I want to hear from Kiwis themselves about how they would like to see it managed”.