Open data future becoming a reality

Land Information Minister Michael Woodhouse today released the 2014 Report on Agency Adoption of the Declaration on Open and Transparent Government.

The Declaration requires public sector agencies to release their high value public data for reuse by third parties.

“The Report shows that government agencies are increasingly releasing public non-personal data in open formats for reuse,” Mr Woodhouse says.

“In turn, third parties are using that public data in increasingly innovative ways – creating a raft of new products, tools and services for use by industry and the wider public.’’

Among those products is www.watchmystreet.co.nz – developed by a private company using public data from Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), the Ministry of Education and Wellington City Council – which allows the public to monitor property values in Wellington.

Other examples include Napier City Council’s ‘GIS Napier’, a free online map viewer that uses data from the LINZ Data Service (LDS), and software firm Omega Tech’s work on a message system to alert users to changes on the road network based on their commonly travelled routes.

More information is available here: www.ict.govt.nz/guidance-and-resources/open-government/declaration-open-and-transparent-government/2014-report-on-adoption-of-the-declaration/