Comment

What is the NZGLS Metadata Standard?

14 The NZGLS Metadata Standard is made up of nineteen metadata 'elements' or fields, and two specially developed New Zealand Government thesauri (for the Subject and Function elements) that agencies will use to create metadata records describing their information and services.

15 Some of the metadata elements are mandatory to complete in the process of creating an NZGLS-compliant metadata record. These elements are absolutely essential for discovery purposes. Other elements are either recommended for completion, or made optional to include in a record. Agencies will include these elements in a record to the extent that they aid discovery of a particular service or piece of information.

How important is the NZGLS Standard?

16 The NZGLS Standard is an essential part of our e-government strategy. The strategy aims to make government information and services easier to access for people and business. This will be achieved by the combination of:

• organisations across the public sector using the NZGLS standard, and centrally supplied tools, to create NZGLS-compliant metadata about the services and/or information they are responsible for; and
• building, by June 2002, an authoritative all-of-government web portal.

17 Building the Portal is a major deliverable of our E-government Strategy. The Portal will be a web site providing its users with the capability to search for, and link into, the online and offline information and services of government agencies in a way that the current New Zealand Government Online (NZGO) website cannot.

18 Creation and maintenance of NZGLS-compliant metadata is critical to the success of the Portal. The Portal relies on a centralised, automatically updated, repository of the NZGLS metadata to provide users with ways of finding the services and information they need without them having prior knowledge of the structure or functions of the public sector.

19 An example of the type of access to government that an NZGLS enabled portal will provide is the case of somebody wanting to know something about driver licensing. Going to the Portal search engine and typing in "licence" would result in the user being provided a list of all the things in government to do with licensing for which metadata records have been created. The Portal would present the results framed up by the following type of question:

• What type of licence do you want to know about (e.g. driving, dog, firearms, business etc.)?

20 If the user then chose "driving" the Portal could ask more questions of the user e.g.:

• Do you want to apply for a driver licence?
• Do you want to renew your driver licence?
• Do you want to find the law about driver licensing?
• Do you want to see policy documents about driver licensing?

21 If the user then chose "apply for a driver licence" the Portal would link them to the Land Transport Safety Authority's website where they would find relevant forms and guidance information available to download, and information about where they can go to sit tests etc. The Portal will work for business in the same way, and will be very important in reducing compliance costs.

22 Successful implementation of the Portal by June 2002 requires a significant percentage of the "full set" [This "full set" of NZGLS Metadata will be finite, but dynamic. Its evolution will reflect changing public sector structures and functions, information resources, and services.] of NZGLS-compliant metadata to be more valuable to its users than NZGO. Without this the Portal will not function. This would leave people and business with the status quo all-of-government web presence; a situation akin to searching for information in a library that is operating without a catalogue, librarians, or full complement of publications.

Participation: who should author metadata?

23 The design of the Portal is deliberately focussed on providing a 'single-window' access point to all information and services in the public sector. This is based on three assumptions:

• the public and business should not be required to distinguish between the Public Service, the wider State sector and local government when trying to access government via the Internet;
• having the entire public sector accessible through a single all-of-government portal is the most cost-effective way of enabling online, discovery level, access to government information and services; and
• such a portal will provide a very important point of commonality between public sector organisations as they go through the process of integrating services and delivering them electronically.

24 Because of this, it is important that the whole of the public sector creates NZGLS-compliant metadata and makes it available to the Portal.

What should metadata be created for?

25 The goal of our e-government strategy is to have every government service, and all relevant government information, described by metadata and discoverable through the Portal as quickly as feasible. This goal applies to both electronic and non-electronic (or online and offline) information and services.

26 Nobody is in a position to define what this set of information and services is. A proxy solution to this problem is provided by the specification of 'NZGLS compliance' in the NZGLS Standard. Part of the compliance specification is a definition of the minimum set of NZGLS-compliant metadata that organisations should create (see Annex 1, Section A.10).

27 Full achievement of our goal requires all of the public sector to achieve compliance. This will not be achieved by 30 June 2002. Organisations will, therefore, have to exercise discretion in achieving the goal. They should determine the priority of creating metadata according to the level of client demand for different elements of their information resources and services.

What does NZGLS compliance mean?

28 Paragraph A.11.1 of the NZGLS Metadata Standard specifies that "An agency is considered to be NZGLS metadata compliant when:

• Good quality NZGLS metadata has been created for all the resources described in the minimum set of resources.
• The contents of the agency's entire website are described at an appropriate level of aggregation (index pages, intermediate level entry pages, etc). The NZGLS custodian (proposed to be Archives NZ) has certified the agency's compliance with the NZGLS Standard."

When will metadata be created, and how will this be done?

29 The Portal is planned to be in service on 1 July 2002. For it to function at an acceptable level at that point, a significant percentage of the minimum set of metadata noted above should have been created by the Public Service, and as many State sector and local government organisations as possible.

30 To meet this goal, the E-government Unit (EGU) will depend on the willing participation of the public sector. The EGU has designed a three phase process for creating and collecting metadata, which involves:

• Phase one: an initial collection of NZGLS-compliant metadata about services provided by the Public Service, fifteen Crown entities, and two local authorities; occurring now under the auspices of the EGU's E-Services project (scheduled for completion by December 2001).
• Phase two: creation of a significant percentage of the minimum set of NZGLS-compliant metadata for both information and services (where not created earlier) by the Public Service, and willing organisations of the wider State sector and local government between 1 March and 31 May 2002.
• Phase 3: ongoing creation and maintenance of metadata by the public sector after 31 May 2002.

31 The EGU will train and support participating organisations, especially in phases one and two.