Following the success of last year's inaugural conference, I was pleased to return to spatial@gov in Canberra, Australia, and again deliver a keynote presentation. It was also a privilege to hear from some leading thinkers in the geospatial arena.

The conference covered various topics under the umbrella theme of 'location as an enabler for government business.' Discussion threads included the uses of geospatial information in defence, water resource management, data infrastructure, and the concept of 'government 2.0'.

A recurrent topic was the role of user communities in geospatial data - from crowd-sourcing, social media as a tool for accessing and disseminating information, and data mashups, which can see some really interesting insights and solutions produced.

The clear message from user communities has been that they are less concerned with the authoritative status of data than with the opportunities it offers. Access to data and what can be done with it are therefore their main concerns. In my role as CE of LINZ, I am responsible for making sure the data we manage can be trusted as authoritative. For example, LINZ maintains New Zealand's cadastre for defining property rights.

In the end it's a balancing act: making sure data is fit for purpose on the one hand, while making this valuable resource easy for people to access and use on the other hand. These are two areas LINZ has made good progress in over the last year.

In my presentation to the conference, I was happy to provide an update on this work and LINZ's achievements since I spoke at spatial@gov in 2009. A major project we have underway is the establishment of a 'provider node' to enable effective and efficient re-use of LINZ's fundamental data. This will form an essential part of our participation in a New Zealand Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), which we're also making good headway in facilitating. SDI will see geospatial data become more widely available and better utilised at a national level.

We've also established a New Zealand branch of the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI), which assists in getting key spatial research projects underway, including research in support of SDI.

We also have projects running internally to improve the quality of our data, to make sure what we're putting out there is fit for purpose, as I mentioned earlier.

These are just some of the subjects I touched on. If you're interested in hearing more about what LINZ is doing, my presentation notes and slides are available on the LINZ website.

It was great to hear about the geospatial work our Australian neighbours are doing as well. There are a lot of parallels in activity taking place there and in New Zealand. For instance, we're both working to establish national SDIs, to identify our fundamental datasets, and to establish data catalogues that make finding geospatial information easier.

Although we might be at different stages in these programmes of work, we each have to deal with the same issues and questions. One example would be the licensing arrangements that underpin open access to data, which both Australia and New Zealand are addressing through the use of creative commons licensing, within nationally developed frameworks.

The conference reaffirmed the opportunities Australia and New Zealand have to work together, through cooperative participation in ventures such as CRCSI, the Spatial Industries Business Association, and the Australia New Zealand Land Information Council.

Sharing knowledge and pairing up on common initiatives will allow us to offer better solutions to our respective countries and to an Australasian audience. There was much discussion, for instance, around how to progress an Australia/New Zealand 'spatial marketplace', which would see both countries benefiting from a frictionless flow of geospatial data.

Colin MacDonald

Chief Executive
Land Information New Zealand