The e-government unit and the National Library have marked a small landmark in the implementation of e-government by signing the first service-level agreement (SLA) for transferring an e-government standard into formal operational mode.
The library has agreed to be the custodian of the Functions of New Zealand (FONZ) and Subjects of New Zealand (SONZ) thesauri that government organisations will use when describing their information resources and services.
In the role of custodian the Library will continue to work with government organisations to ensure they use the thesauri consistently and that the set of controlled terms continue to meet their needs as services evolve, says a joint statement.
The agreement was signed earlier this month.
Thesauri are controlled lists of terms that allow website search engines to find information in a consistent way.
Next up will be the transfer to Archives New Zealand of the NZ Government Locator Service (NZGLS) metadata standard, the other main element in the task of finding appropriate Government documents
Over the next year the programme will attend to transferring other standards and operational aspects of the programme to appropriate government organisations, the statement says.