Our Work

The Partnership has been created to help strenghten the  data-use system so New Zealanders have reason to trust that their data will be kept safe, and data use and reuse helps to create real economic and social value for New Zealand. You can read our Terms of Reference here [PDF, 531 KB]. 

The Partnership's work programme is based largely on the findings and insights of the Data Futures Forum. This work identified that there were four major issues and opportunities around creating value through trusted data use:

The data-use system is hard to navigate

Data practices and relationships are complex and evolving quickly, and the existing ways of doing things (policies, practices and institutions) are not designed for the emerging environment. There is no clear, authoritative guidance for Ministers and policy makers, or for the people and organisations sharing and using data.

Potential for much greater data sharing

Public and private sector organisations have rich data but are unwilling or feel unable to share – because acceptable boundaries for sharing and reuse may be unclear.

Tenuous trust

Public trust in the data-use system is tenuous and, once lost, trust can be hard to restore. Maintaining trust is vital to ongoing data innovation, including Government’s reuse of data to help determine investment decisions and target services. There is no independent trusted forum for an inclusive conversation on data use.

Potential for more data reuse and innovation to create economic and social value

People and organisations are not using data as much as they could to create value – because of lack of understanding of the value, lack of access to data, fears of negative reactions, or practical barriers such as no data standards or lack of analytics capability.

Approach

The Partnership has focused its efforts on three areas of work to help solve these issues, and to take advantage of the opportunities:

  1. Catalyst Projects to demonstrate the value of data use, and understand the practical barriers to greater sharing and value. 
  2. Diagnose and fix to identify challenges in the data-use system that stand in the way of effectictive data sharing and use and explore solutions.
  3. Facilitate a conversation with New Zealanders to understand their perspectives on data use. The Partnership will use what it learns to develop guidelines designed to help organisations build and maintain the trust of those whose data they wish to use.