Govt to use Creative Commons

The Dom Post reports:

The Cabinet will today issue an instruction to government departments that they should make all data they hold available for free or at a reasonable-price in accessible file formats for reuse by businesses, unless there are good reasons not to.

The Government will recommend they do so under a “Creative Commons” licence that means they could not usually be held liable for any errors or omissions.

Finance Minister Bill English said the policy would spawn new business opportunities and services, increase government accountability and allow greater scrutiny of policy decisions.

“It is the Government’s expectation that agencies should release all non-personal and unclassified data with high potential value for re-use.”

Internal Affairs Minister Nathan Guy said departments had been opening up over the past 10 years, but the steps they had taken had been “ad hoc” and there were no clear expectations. About 1400 data sets are available free online through the website data.govt.nz.

Great to see the Government using Creative Commons, and also making a tangible commitment to opening up Government data.