Ownership

Standard: Reasons for collection/creation

Criteria for collection or creation of data and documents must meet explicit legal or business requirements and be subject to scrutiny by the Business Custodian.

The supplier must be informed which data or document collection is compulsory, which is voluntary and the reason for collection.

Supports Policies: Ownership

Scope and Interpretation

Agencies must collect or create data and documents only in the execution of statutory or defined business requirements. Those requirements must be documented to a standard set by the Business Custodian, before collection or creation. Legislation must be quoted, where applicable. It is important to identify where the business requirements may include the collection on behalf of other agencies, eg for the Department of Statistics.

The Crown Data Steward will audit the defined requirements. Unless the criteria for collection are themselves classified, the public must be able to see those criteria (see Publishing).

Any existing creation or collection must be reviewed, and where there is no requirement, creation or collection should cease. Agencies must inform the Crown Data Steward when and why they intend to stop collecting data. The Crown Data Steward will then review the ongoing need for creation/collection, with a review of any affected processes in agencies.

When collecting information, agencies must identify whether each data element requested is mandatory or whether the collection is voluntary and helpful for the organisation to conduct its business. Collection methods, e.g. paper or electronic forms, must make it easy to distinguish mandatory from voluntary supply. The consent of individuals will be needed where data is to be used for other government purposes e.g. public registers.

Rationale

The purpose for collection must be well defined in order to prevent the collection or creation of irrelevant, unnecessarily intrusive or meaningless information. Trust and compliance of the supplier will be enhanced by above which should in turn improve quality of data. This is a demonstration of the Crown acting in good faith.

Provisions of the Privacy Act, the Statistics Act, and the Official Information Act apply when implementing this standard.

Standard: Transfer of intellectual property

Where transfer of exclusive intellectual property to the Crown is by statute, collecting agencies must ensure that the supplier is informed of the transfer.

In the absence of statute, any transfer of intellectual property to the Crown must be by explicit agreement between the Crown and the supplier.

In the absence of statutory authority, agencies must have the approval of the Crown Data Steward to transfer out of Crown ownership either the Crown copy of collected data or the intellectual property of the Crown.

Supports Policies: Ownership

Scope and Interpretation

Statements of statutory requirements for the transfer of intellectual property must be publicly and equitably available. For formally constituted groups, informing them of the transfer of intellectual property could mean a formal directive, or a formal communication directing their attention to statutory requirements. For individuals or groups supplying data or documents, there could be a formal statement on a data collection form advising the supplier of the transfer. Statutory requirements must also be available via the New Zealand Government website, NZGO.

Transfer of intellectual property rights may or may not include copyright (see Glossary: Copyrightfor more details).

If transfer to the Crown is by agreement then the current owner must be able to ultimately refuse the transaction if desired. If transfer is by statute, the original owner should at least have due notice, ideally before the data is collected or documents created.

The Crown Data Steward will refer proposed transfers of data or documents out of Crown ownership for assessment by the Chief Archivist.

Rationale

Transfer of intellectual property must be explicit, to preserve the rights of individuals and organisations exchanging data and documents with the Crown, and to preserve the assets of the Crown.

Similarly to the standard Reasons for Collection/Creation, this standard enhances trust and compliance by the supplier.