Hon Maurice Williamson
Minister for Land Information

22 November 2012

International recognition for LINZ Data Service

Land Information Minister Maurice Williamson says the two accolades Land Information New Zealand won at the Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards for its innovative LINZ Data Service is a great achievement.

The awards were presented in Canberra last night.

“Being named winner of the ‘Spatial Enablement’ category and the JK Barrie Award for Overall Excellence is recognition of the work Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) has done to develop and implement the LINZ Data Service (LDS),” Mr Williamson says.

LDS is the first standards compliant service established in New Zealand to provide free and open access to government-held public data, and supports the creation of new and improved products and services across business, government and the community.

By providing this data free of charge and online, LDS allows LINZ to provide customers with a better service through better and faster decision making and faster processes as well as generating cost savings for many organisations.

“LINZ has created an open data service that could set the international benchmark for how government agencies approach the release of public data for reuse, innovation and enterprise.”

“The success of LDS is a demonstration of the Government’s commitment to, and confidence in, the value of geospatial information and open data,” Mr Williamson says.

ends

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Arguably Reassuring: Inspector-General Finds GCSB "Arguably" Legal

Of the 88 individuals:

• 15 cases involving 22 individuals did not have any information intercepted by GCSB.

• another four cases involving five individuals were the subjects of a New Zealand Security Intelligence Service warrant and the GCSB assisted in the execution of the warrants. The Inspector-General is of the view that there were arguably no breaches and the law is unclear.

• the Bureau only provided technical assistance which did not involve interception of communications, involving three of the individuals, so no breach occurred.

• the remaining cases involved the collection of metadata, and the Inspector-General formed the view that there had arguably been no breach, noting once again that the law is unclear.
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