Preparing to launch a new data.govt.nz catalogue service

The data.govt team will be migrating currently listed datasets across to CKAN - the internationally recognised open data catalogue platform - as part of the release of the new data.govt.nz.

Preview of the new data.govt.nz catalogue home page

The preliminary migration of dataset listings to the new platform is expected to be completed within the next 3 weeks and the current catalogue will remain live during this time. 

Migration strategy

Approaches to migration will include::

  • Automated harvesting - where agencies host their own Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW) and API (regular harvests set up to run periodically).
  • Building of harvestable JSON metadata using the data.govt.nz data schema spreadsheet tool (once off harvest into CKAN).
  • Manual migration of around 200 datasets

The data.govt team will be talking to agencies about the best approach to pulling their metadata into data.govt.nz and any migration will be tested with agency dataset coordinators to ensure the integrity of datasets are verified. 

The first agencies involved are: 

  • MFE
  • MOT
  • MBIE
  • Treasury
  • Stats NZ

Current catalogue

Once the new catalogue is live (early March), the current catalogue will remain available for 4 weeks, allowing agencies to check against new catalogue listing(s). After this period the current catalogue and related features will be turned off. 

We will redirect the current top 50 datasets (identified via analytics) to new urls, and the product support team will accommodate any further redirect requests.

New catalogue

The new cataloguing platform provides a number of improvements; both for end users and agency data contributors, including:

  • Automated harvesting functionality
  • Real-time views to see value of datasets / determine if machine-readable quickly
  • Enhanced mapping / data visualisation functionality
  • Better search functionality
  • Improved user interface
  • Better organic SEO – url syntax, title, description
  • Fit for purpose cataloguing and repository platform

Contact

We'll be making updates to this announcement as we progress through migration and head towards go-live so keep an eye on our blog section.

If you have any questions, comments please contact the data.govt.nz product support team at info@data.govt.nz.

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