New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing (NZGOAL) Framework

Abstract

The New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework (NZGOAL) is government guidance for agencies to follow when releasing copyright works and non-copyright material for re-use by others. NZGOAL advocates for the use of Creative Commons licenses when releasing government data and information. It strongly encourages agencies to include licensing information in the metadata of released materials to ensure clarity on reuse rights.

Agencies are advised to apply appropriate Creative Commons licenses to their works, which inherently provide information about rights and permissions.

Including licensing information in metadata is recommended as a best practice to enhance transparency and facilitate reuse.

NZGOAL's Guidance Note 7 addresses obtaining licensing rights when creating databases intended for open licensing. It underscores the importance of securing appropriate licensing rights for individual contributions to ensure that the overall database can be openly licensed without legal complications.

Overview

Country	New Zealand
Start date	2010
Annual Budget	€1M
Responsible organisation(s)	Government agency
Target group(s)	State Services agencies, including government departments, Crown entities, and other public sector organizations, responsible for releasing government-held information and data for public reuse.
Policy instrument type	policy framework, guidelines

Background

The New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing (NZGOAL) Framework was initially approved by Cabinet on 5 July 2010.

In December 2014, Version 2 of NZGOAL was released. The update recommended the use of the more recent Creative Commons 4.0 International licences over the previous 3.0 New Zealand licences, reflecting advancements in licensing standards. The code samples for online releases of Creative Commons licensed works were updated to HTML5, ensuring compatibility with modern web standards. The update acknowledged the Declaration on Open and Transparent Government, highlighting its relevance to NZGOAL and reinforcing the government's commitment to open data.

in July 2016, the NZGOAL Software Extension (NZGOAL-SE) was introduced to provide specific guidance on licensing and releasing copyright software works under free and open-source software licenses, such as the General Public License (GPL) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) license.

Objective(s)

To standardise the licensing of government copyright works for re-use using Creative Commons New Zealand law licences and recommends the use of ‘no-known rights’ statements for non-copyright material.

Public access URL

https://data.govt.nz/toolkit/policies/nzgoal/nzgoal-version-2

All tags

• Responsibility, Ownership & Stewardship
• New Zealand
• 2010
• Government agency
• Higher education institutes
• Public research institutes
• Research support staff
• National government
• Subnational government
• Strategies, agendas and plans
• Information about rights and licensing

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