Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) will commit $3.1 million over six years to establish and support the LINZ Data Service.
LINZ general manager customer services Jan Pierce announced the investment at this week’s GIS senior executive summit held by Eagle Technology.
Pierce says agencies currently pay around $10,000 to $20,000 per year for LINZ and other data.
“The research we undertook indicated that there are 68 local and central government agencies that currently use third parties but would prefer to source their data directly from LINZ,” she said.
“This is projected to result in efficiency savings of between $680,000 and $1.3 million per year across government.”
The benefits of establishing the Data Service suggested a return of 10:1 through removing access barriers.
“This is likely to show an increase in the market in a range of $4-7 million per year.
“Through the LINZ Data Service, we will have an exemplar data service, with access barriers removed from LINZ datasets.
“No matter how accurate your data is, it’s of no value if locked away and out of the reach of a wider community.”
LINZ will release the datasets using a web service.