A copy of the Historic Places Trust Register

a Official Information request to New Zealand Historic Places Trust (Pouhere Taonga) by Matt Lane

The request was rejected by New Zealand Historic Places Trust (Pouhere Taonga).

Matt Lane

10 June 2010

Dear New Zealand Historic Places Trust (Pouhere Taonga),

Currently you provide access to search results of the Historic
Places Trust Register (up to 500 results at a time) at your site
http://www.historic.org.nz/TheRegister/R... .

The Register consists of more than 5500 entries, so one could (if
they were inclined) rebuild the list (slowly) by multiple searches,
and copying and pasting.

For a full copy of the Register, you charge $300+GST.

I appreciate that charging for copies of the register must be a
useful revenue stream for the Historic Places Trust. However, as a
New Zealand citizen who pays taxes, I feel like you are charging me
twice. My understanding is that Crown Research Institutes must
ensure that they are financially viable by returning a profit,
however as an Autonomous Crown Entity, I am not sure that charging
for the Register fits your mandate to protect and promote historic
places in New Zealand. I could be sympathetic to the $300 fee if I
were convinced that it cost you that amount to provide me a copy of
the Register. I do not believe that this is that case (I looking
for just an excel spreadsheet, not a hardcopy).

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully,

Matt Lane

Link to this | Send follow up

FYI Requests

20 July 2010

Attachment 20100625171125416.pdf
176K Download View as HTML

[Subject only] Fwd: FW:

show quoted sections

Link to this | Reply to this message

Glen Barnes left an annotation (23 July 2010)

This is where it gets interesting. The information is available on the website however it is covered by a very restrictive copyright. What rights do we have to get a copy of this information from the website now that they have rejected the request?

Also a good follow-up question is to ask for how much revenue they have made each year for the last 5 years from selling this data and who the customers are.

Link to this

Glen Barnes left an annotation (25 July 2010)

You may also want to email the MCH as they are currently reviewing the Historic Places Trust Act. (See this article - http://www.historic.org.nz/AboutUs/HPARe... this site - http://www.mch.govt.nz/projects/heritage...) The email address to use is hpareview@mch.govt.nz.

It seems that the justification used to not give the data was that the act only stated that it needed to be made available for inspection at the offices. This act was draft before the web really took off so now would be a good time to get that part updated.

Link to this

Matt Lane left an annotation (29 July 2010)

I have now emailed:
- the Law Commission (who are reviewing the OIA http://talklaw.co.nz/talkofficialinforma... ),
- the State Services Commission (with reference to NZGOAL http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/information-... ),
- and the Ministry fr Culture and Heritage at hpareview@mch.govt.nz (with reference to Review of the Historic Places Act).

Link to this

Glen Barnes left an annotation (30 July 2010)

Here is a copy of what I sent to the review email
and the response

EMAIL:

-----Original Message-----
From: Glen Barnes
Sent: Monday, 26 July 2010 9:09 p.m.
To: HPA Review
Subject: Review of the Historic Places Act (1993)

Hi,

While reviewing some Historic Places Trust information it has come to my
attention that the Historic Places Trust Act is being reviewed. I would
like to see section 36 of the Act reviewed as this was formulated in a
time before ready access to the internet and is being used to deny
access to pubic information in a format useful for any meaningful reuse.

Section 36 (Availability of Register) States:

"The Register shall be open for public inspection during usual business
hours at the principal office of the Trust in Wellington and at regional
offices of the Trust."

When requesting this information in a more suitable format under the OIA
this was refused:

http://fyi.org.nz/requests/12-a_copy_of_...
http://fyi.org.nz/requests/12/response/1...
df

I would like to suggest 2 amendments.

1. The Register shall be made available for download via the internet in
a machine readable format
2. The contents of the Register shall be licensed under a permissive
license

By providing free and open access to the register will allow innovative
uses of the data such as iPhone applications, 'Mashups' with historic
photo libraries and publication to other formats not currently support
by the current Historic Places Trust website.

I have cc'ed Keitha Booth from the SSC who has been involved in a lot of
open government work and can help with the practical implementation of
these suggestions using the NZGOAL and other frameworks for open data.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Regards,
Glen Barnes

RESPONSE:

Hi Glen

Thank you for your email. We will look into your suggestions, and get
back to you when we have considered them. Thank you for raising these
matters with us.

Peter Richardson
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
DDI (04) 4989215

Link to this

Things to do with this request

Anyone:
New Zealand Historic Places Trust (Pouhere Taonga) only: