Data.govt.nz
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data.govt.nz Requirements
New Zealand will eventually build a data.govt.nz portal, analogous to data.gov in the US and other similar databases of Government open data. When the New Zealand Government gets to the point of wanting a data.govt.nz, it will help them to have clear requirements from the businesses, non-profits, and citizens who are already remixing data from the government. This is that set of requirements.
(Closed on Nov 4, 2009 when data.govt.nz was released.)
Purpose
An Open Data Catalogue is a searchable database of government data sources, which lets data consumers quickly find the trusted source for their data.
Principles
The following are principles that make an Open Data Catalogue useful:
- Collaborative: it does aggregate from sources in and outside of government, to be the largest catalogue of open government data in the country. It does not require information to be rekeyed into the data.govt.nz database.
- Open: it does offer the catalogue in a bulk-downloadable form under an appropriate (CC-0 or similar) license. It does not lock up its data or attempt to force people to use the catalogue's web site.
- Open Source: it does make its source code open for others to use and improve on, and accepts patches and changes accordingly. It does not expect that all the innovations in software and data cataloguing will come from or be implemented by government.
- Inclusive: it does work with and compile data from central government, local government, CRIs, and other government-funded agencies, acknowledging that citizen-funded data is produced in multiple places. It does not take a narrow view of government as "Wellington".
- Conversational: it does encourage, permit, and moderate reasoned comments from users of the datasets. It does not pretend that the originator of the dataset in the catalogue is the final word on that dataset.
- Internally Useful: it does offer feeds by agency, so an agency can build a data catalogue on their web site from data in data.govt.nz. It does not need to be the only source of government data.
- RESTian: it does offer data in hierarchical, human-guessable, programmable URLs in multiple formats. It does not believe that people are the only users of the catalogue.
- Extensible: it does permit domain-specific metadata to be recorded, e.g. geospatial. It does not reduce the catalogue to the lowest-common denominator (and thus the lowest-common utility).
- Open standards based. It does use international standards for metadata (e.g., ANZLIC/ISO), where such standards exist, to facilitate interoperability and data sharing. It does not use proprietary formats and protocols which restrict access & interoperability.
Details
To achieve the principles, the following features are required:
- a clear statement of the license under which the data are offered, such license being the most open possible for reuse.
- RESTian PURLs, e.g. preferably NOT /agency/dataset/version/ as agency domain names change, but a Permanent URL
- XML, CSV, and RSS downloads of the database, at each level in the URL hierarchy.
- a code.google.com or similar project hosting the source code, from which the Government database is built (with optional local customisations to configure features that the main branch has but which government does not want).
- moderated threaded comments.
- optional registration for users. Registered users get a user page listing their contributed datasets and comments.
- ability to notify the contributor of a dataset when there's a new comment on their dataset.
- enabling rating of datasets (quality, utility) by data users
Fields
The following are important pieces of information about each dataset that data.govt.nz must record:
- Description
- Updated Frequency
- Website Address - Location for more information about this dataset.
- Contact Name
- Contact Phone
- Contact Email Address
- Instant Access - Is there an approval process or time delay to download this dataset?
- Access Instructions
- License
- Cost
- Download url's for each format
- URL for electronic metadata file
- FONZ and SONZ taxonomy
- Who suggested it and when
- Source for this record (which feed or database it came from) and when it was last imported
- Data quality statements/caveats
Who are we?
Open New Zealand (http://open.org.nz) is a federation of citizens, businesses, and non-profits who use open Government data in New Zealand to build better interactions for citizens with their Government. The primary authors of this document are Nathan Torkington and Glen Barnes, with contributions from Mike Pearson, Julian Carver, and pcreso.
