Dear Real Estate Agents Authority,

I would like to have access to the register as a bulk download (as opposed to searching) and also have the register licensed under a permissive license under the guidelines of the Declaration on Open and Transparent Government.

- Can you please provide me with a data file of the register (CSV files or similar text files) as per Section 69(3) of the Real Estate Agents Act 2008.
- Is it possible to license the data under an NZGOAL license such as CC-BY? The current copyright statement is in beach of the Declaration on Open and Transparent Government ("To support this declaration, the government asserts that the data and information it holds on behalf of the public must be open, trusted and authoritative, well managed, readily available, without charge where possible, and reusable, both legally and technically. Personal and classified data and information must be protected.")
- Is it possible to provide machine readable access to the the register on an ongoing basis to keep our internal database in sync.?

We would like to use this data to provide information to the public as per section 64(a) of the Real Estate Agents Act 2008 and also use this for internal use (as outlined in your current copyright statement "Such information may be reproduced, free of charge, for personal or in-house use without further permission.")

Yours faithfully,

Glen Barnes

Dear REAA Policy & Legal,

Thanks you for your prompt reply to my request and clarification around personal information.

I do however want you to take another look at providing the data in a machine readable format (for the purposes outlined in your copyright statement).

You are refusing to provide a copy of the file in electronic format as the data is already "publicly available".

Case W37113, and section 16(2) of the OIA sets out that if the item requested is a 'document' then the organisation must provide it in the form requested. I requested a document (bulk/machine readable file) and this was not provided.

Case W37113 sets out that an s18(d) refusal will not suffice if a document is requested in electronic form yet it is provided in hard form, if electronic form is needed for some reason. In that case it was because the person wanted to perform computer manipulations of the data.

The same situation applies here. Although the document is in electronic format it is not in a machine readable format without significant work. In fact the website puts measures in place to remove the ability to machine read the data (CAPTCHA's)

Can you please reconsider supplying the data in a machine readable format?

Yours sincerely,
Glen Barnes

Dear REAA Policy & Legal,

We have a list of real estate agents and offices in our database and we would like to add a field to our database that is their REAA number. This would allow us to determine whether they are a current licensed real estate agent and it would also allow us to check details against our current database. To be clear we will NOT be using this for any bulk emailing.

We feel this is consistent with the terms of s64 and also your copyright statement concerning in house use:

"Unless otherwise stated, the information available on or through this website is protected by copyright. Such information may be reproduced, free of charge, for personal or in-house use without further permission."

We may at a future time link to the agents page on the REAA website if this does not breach any terms of use (As far as I am aware it will not) however that is not the primary reason for this request. Permission would be sought for any additional use other than that stated above.

Yours sincerely,

Glen Barnes