What data should we ask local councils for?

Thanks for those links Nadia. Are you suggesting that "all decisions are final" on data.govt.nz and we shouldn't bother relitigating them, even with a stronger case?

@shaunmcgirr1 the intent is to add to the case for releasing data and to also see what data other people are interested in.
It's important for government agencies to get a better understanding of what data is in demand because the Declaration on Open and Transparent Government directs Public Service Departments to release high value public data for reuse. Public demand is an indicator of 'high value'.

I'm hoping a few #GovHackNZ projects can tap into unreleased data sources and bridge that gap - many agency likely haven't released data because they can't figure out how - rather than they don't want to.

Good Afternoon.

I am preparing a bunch of blog posts on the different WCC datasets already available online, how to access and use them at a basic level and some of the tips and tricks for getting the gold out of them. Like many aspects of Government it is a case of some areas are more developed than others:

At present I am themeing them around
- Demographic Information - the type of information we use to project the cities growth and plan for the population. The central piece of this will be around this platform - http://profile.idnz.co.nz/wellington
- Building information - the type of information we hold and have available on the cities buildings their age, use, type, location etc. This will include a non confidential rating cadastral release (once I find a place to put it - know of anywhere?)
-Infrastructure - information on road coverage, tracks, parks and all that stuff that keeps your city going from when you turn on a tap in the morning to walk home by streetlight at night. This will be a bigger topic I can hopefully expand on a bit later

-GIS- the geographic information we hold on the city and our data hub you can access it at http://data.wcc.opendata.arcgis.com/

I was going to do some more stuff around natural environment, transport use etc later when I have more time.

That's fantastic Sean, thank you! What you are doing will be really helpful to show other councils the way. Please let us know when you publish those blogs so we can promote them. I'll contact you separately about a landing place for your cadastral data.

Will sort the blog place tomorrow at the meeting. Keep the suggestions coming for data and I will let you know which ones we can help with and why we cant do the others.

I only discovered earlier this year that the Regional Council's have pulled together a shared data platform here:

http://www.lawa.org.nz

Outstanding! Will add it to my list of lists...

A free searchable database of resource consent applications (and approvals) sorted by street would be helpful for neighbours and residents' associations. Currently WCC releases pdfs of resource consents issued over a specific time period but this is only helpful if you know the right time period to search.

Thanks Kay, I've asked Sean at WCC if they could provide even a sliver of this data as a preview.