According to the latest report on the adoption of the “Declaration on Open and Transparent Government”, government departments in New Zealand are making an impressive progress in sharing their data for re-use on data.govt.nz

The Declaration on Open and Transparent Government was approved by the Cabinet on 8 August 2011. It seeks to encourage government departments to actively release high value public data so that private and community sectors can use it for socio-economic development.

“The report shows 10 departments are now fully compliant with the Declaration and 16 plan to take it on board in 2013/14. This brings the total uptake to 84 per cent which is a great result compared with 72 per cent in 2012,” says Internal Affairs Minister Chris Tremain, adding that Open Data Champions at senior management level in each department are key drivers of this change.

Notable highlights showing economic and social benefit from data release include the growth of the open data platform company, Koordinates, which is partnering with the government to offer much of government’s public data in open formats; the ANZ Truckometer, which uses New Zealand Transport Agency’s open traffic density data to accurately predict GDP growth, and inform financial investment decisions; and Land Information New Zealand’s open data being used by Navman to keep its Magellan handheld GPS devices up to date.

“By sharing data they are reducing duplication and saving money. A great case of this is in Christchurch where engineers and surveyors are able to directly access and re-use aerial imagery from CERA’s map service for planning and recovery,” shares Tremain.

“Another good example is local government and independent researchers using household travel survey data from the Ministry of Transport to inform transport and district planning policies.

With the impressive progress and promising outputs underway, Tremain says the government will intensify its support for departments who are in the early stages of open data adoption.

Furthermore, the government will also actively explore more public data release to encourage third party contribution to policy development; engage with Crown agencies and local government; work with users; and continue discussions with media organisations to build data journalism capability to use public data more actively.