Officials Group
MEETING MINUTES
Date / time: Wednesday March 22, 1-2pm
Venue: The Reserve Bank, No.2 The Terrace.
Officials Groups participants: Auckland Council, Department of Internal Affairs, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Parliamentary Counsel Office, State Services Commission, and Statistics New Zealand.
Agenda & Topics
1. Welcome and acknowledgements
Apologies noted from Ministry of Justice, Te Puni Kōkiri and Treasury. Welcome to Auckland Council.
Minutes provided for meeting 22 February 2017.
2. Update on commitments
Progress updates were provided.
- Commitment 1: Open Budget
- Update to be provided at the next Officials Group meeting.
- Commitment 2: Improving official information practices
- Progress is being made on building agency capability, encouraging compliance, and the proactive release of material.
- Commitment 3: Improving open data access and principles
- Commitment 4: Tracking progress and outcomes of open government data release
- Both Commitment 3 and 4 have had delays in delivery, with the Open Government Information and Data Programme moving from LINZ to Statistics New Zealand. This move was completed in March 2017, giving an opportunity for greater focus and pace in the foundation work needed to deliver on these commitments, including work on the potential to join the International Open Data Charter.
- There are likely to be opportunities to align this work with Australia’s Open Data programme following the 19 February release of a joint statement from the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand in which they agreed to:
“…collaborate on public data initiatives to better align agendas, share lessons learnt on best practice, and work together on data commitments as part of the Open Government Partnership.”
- Commitment 5: Ongoing engagement for OGP
- Progress updated as a tabled item.
- Commitment 6: Improving access to legislation
- Progress on the collation of all NZ legislation.
- Commitment 7: Improving policy practices
- Progress is being made on the delivery of an online policy analysis methods toolkit. The toolkit will be supplemented by a model which will offer guidance about how to best use insights, evidence and data from diverse perspectives.
3. Reporting
The Expert Advisory Panel would like to receive regular updates from the Officials Group on project progress.
The sample report used for Commitment 5 will be sent to the EAP for feedback.