Media statement - National Library to manage e-government

Media statement

National Library to manage e-government standard

12 Dec 2001

National Librarian, Chris Blake and E-government Unit Director, Brendan Boyle, recently signed the first Service Level Agreement 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.

The library and information management sector is no stranger to the art of describing resources so they can be found later. The National Library creates the bibliographic records for published New Zealand information resources. Chris Blake said that the Library was a natural home for the ongoing management of the two thesauri.

Thesauri are controlled lists of terms that allow website search engines to find information in a consistent way. The FONZ and SONZ thesauri terms are used in certain fields of the New Zealand Government Locator Service (NZGLS) Metadata Standard that has been approved by Cabinet as the official standard for government. The new government portal, scheduled to go live on 1 July 2002 will find government information and services that have been described using the NZGLS Metadata Standard, FONZ and SONZ.

Brendan Boyle said that this was the first formal handover of a standard developed in the programme into operational mode. The transfer to Archives New Zealand of the NZGLS standard itself is imminent and over the next year the programme will attend to transferring other standards and operational aspects of the programme to appropriate government organisations.

For more information on the thesauri see http://www.e-government.govt.nz/nzgls/index.html

Contacts:
Alison Elliott, National Library of New Zealand (04 474 3026)
Brendan Boyle, Director E-government Unit (04 495 6719)

Important step forward for e-government

27 Nov 2001

Media statement by the Minister of State Services.