Content

Goal

To unlock New Zealand's stock of content and provide all New Zealanders with seamless, easy access to the information that is important to their lives, businesses, and cultural identity.

Targets

• By December 2006, to develop and launch a National Content Strategy.
• To develop the online Cultural Portal.
• To implement the National Digital Heritage Archive and the Māori Language Information Programme and progress Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand (see case study).
• To digitise existing content and develop new content through the Community Partnership Fund.

Challenge

To respond to two important trends:

• globalisation and the rapid expansion of access to information
• the falling cost and growing reach of technology

by ensuring that uniquely New Zealand content is made available to enrich our lives and tell our stories to the world.

In doing so we will use ICT to unlock the valuable repositories of information that have not yet been digitised, create new content, map our existing digital assets, and improve Internet access to the richness of our digital resources. This will give New Zealanders access to information that is important to all areas of our lives.

To become a true Knowledge Society, New Zealand needs to focus on information-rich activities: those in which we create, collect, manage, process, store, move, or access information via a networked environment. Recent years have seen rapid growth in both the amount of information created and the diversity of its formats.

Feedback on the draft Strategy suggested that the local, national, and international stocks of ideas, information, and knowledge are of equal importance to our future. However, content that is not organised, has a cost barrier, is technically of poor quality, or is hard to find, is of little value. Respondents emphasised the importance of access to New Zealand’s stock of scientific and technological research information. Digital content is now being utilised as an accepted part of most industries, including the creative, film, and media areas. It is also beginning to transform other industries such as the interpretation of bioinformatics information, medical imaging, and high-tech manufacturing.

It is important for New Zealanders from all walks of life to be able to create and use their own digital content in order to create value (social, cultural, and economic) for themselves, their communities, and our nation.

Māori are both creators and consumers of content and distinctively Māori content is particularly visible in the areas of: broadcasting; the arts and creative industries; as well as the education, health, and business sectors including tourism.⁸ Māori digital content is important not simply for its economic potential, but also as a vital means of expressing Māori culture in today's society and into the future, strengthening Māori society and identity, telling Māori stories to other Māori, and communicating with the wider world. Hence the importance of content being created and maintained in the Māori language.

There are risks to be managed. Unrestricted access to information encourages the unauthorised use of copyright material. There is a need to balance the rights of intellectual property holders with the rights of those seeking access to information for educational or cultural purposes. The Creative Commons concept offers a different model for managing these rights. Online information is vulnerable, and requires a secure, reliable, and well-regulated ICT environment. In a digital environment, the design, format, accessibility, and searchability (of websites and documents) are all important if people are to find the information they seek.

The government has a duty to provide the easiest possible access to government information and services, including government records documenting citizens’ rights and entitlements.¹⁰ The citizen has the right to be able to access government information, hence the need to fill the current gaps in the online availability of government policy and legislation.

Actions

National Content Strategy – New Zealand Online

The unlocking of valuable repositories of information (particularly older or historical material), or making available new ones available, will add to the nation’s wealth of knowledge, and create a major new resource for education, cultural development, and innovation.

The National Content Strategy will consider two main issues:

• what to digitise (both digitising existing holdings and developing new digital material),
• how to digitise.

There are three parts to developing a National Content Strategy:

1. Mapping the content landscape: by preparing a dynamic web-based asset map of digitally available material in New Zealand. This work will consider what specific e-content resources are already available in New Zealand, identify gaps and where content is being duplicated (where and by whom), and consider what new e-content might be required and could be made available by various means in key areas such as e-health, e-science, e-government, e-commerce, culture and heritage (including broadcasting), and the creative industries.
    
2. Policy framework: Developing a multi-stakeholder (pan-government and non-government) policy framework for the digitisation of material important to New Zealand and the development of new creative content. The framework would address access to international databases (scientific and other) that can assist with a range of New Zealand research needs. The policy framework would consider issues relating to intellectual and cultural property.
    
3. Building the necessary technical architecture for comprehensive national standards-based access to e-content resources. Internationally-agreed metadata and interoperability standards will be applied to ensure that digital material can be shared and preserved to maintain access over the very long term. It will include sets of geospatial information held by government agencies and will take into account the standards developed by the e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF).

The Cultural Portal

The portal will provide a co-ordinated web presence for government cultural agencies, government-funded cultural organisations, and private-sector and community-based cultural entities and enterprises.  

The first stage will be to construct the infrastructure of a Web Portal, as a common access point to arts, culture, and heritage enterprises and information. It will incorporate a directory of sector organisations, facilitating easy access to information, services, and activities within the sector.

The second stage will set up a Cultural Events website within the Cultural Portal, aimed at increasing domestic and international audiences for cultural goods and services, cultural tourism events, facilities, and destinations in New Zealand.

The final stage will offer access to cultural products, activities, and services, enabling cultural enterprises to move more of their business online and reach audiences and consumers in local and global markets more effectively.

⁸ See www.whalewatch.co.nz for an example.

¹⁰ Government information includes statutes and regulations, legal obligations, Official Information Act requests, and details of policies and programmes.

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