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This publication has been compiled by Land and Spatial Information,Department Natural Resources and Mines.

© State of Queensland, 2013.

The Queensland Government supports and encourages the dissemination and exchange of its information. The copyright in this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia (CC BY) licence.

Under this licence you are free, without having to seek our permission, to use thispublication in accordance with the licence terms.

You must keep intact the copyright notice and attribute the State of Queensland as the source of the publication.

For more information on this licence, visit

The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The Queensland Government shall not be liable for technical or other errors or omissions contained herein. The reader/user accepts all risks and responsibility for losses, damages, costs and other consequences resulting directly or indirectly from using this information.

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Contents

Executive summary

Strategic overview

Introduction

Information asset governance

Factors considered as part of Open Data Strategy development

Size of datasets

Datasets that contain personal or commercial-in-confidence information

Dataset formats

Removing licencing restrictions

Use of distributors

Pricing

Assisting customers to determine fitness for use of datasets

Data being released

Spatial information

Land and water rights

Water monitoring

Geoscience and exploration

Mining safety and health

Future program

Appendix

Datasets available and planned for release (with timeline)

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Executive summary

The Department of Natural Resources and Mines (DNRM) is focused on ensuring Queenslanders benefit from the productive, sustainable use of the of the State’s natural resources – our land, water and minerals. To assist in delivering this outcome, the department acquires extensiveinformation related to the State’s land, natural resources and mining activities. The information held by the department supports five business objectives:

  • A globally competitive mining, petroleum and gas industry;
  • A safe and healthy resources industry;
  • Sustainable and productive use of land and water resources;
  • Balance in the access to and use of natural resources;
  • Regulatory certainty for communities, industry and investors.

The information managed by the department is sought after by many customers and stakeholders. This includes the public, industry, academia and all tiers of government. The information is of value in its raw form (i.e. a dataset) to specific customers and stakeholders, while the majority of customers and stakeholders require the information to be presented in forms that they can use readily and understand.Typically the department provides this through reports and publications, online applications, and production of maps.

In developing this strategy, the department has assessed its data holdings, and using its knowledge of customer and stakeholder requirements prioritised the planned releases. The department is committed to working with customers and stakeholders to understand better the datasets needed and their associated priorities and it is intended that these be incorporated in future versions of DNRM’s Open Data Strategy. The department believes that ongoing open engagement with customers and stakeholders will result in significant benefits to Queensland resulting from easy access to government data.

The department is a strong supporter of continued improvements in open access to information encouraging improved transparency, improved collaboration on natural resource management, innovative new value-added products and encouraging investment in Queensland. The release of information is already part of the way the department does business and the department already provides many of its datasets online, for free under an open licence.

This strategy is focussed on increasing the release of raw data in a machine readable format, under open licensing and where possible for free. This will involve the department progressively moving from existing dataset formats to those more suited to easier use by others in creating new innovative products, in particular provision as online data services in addition to data sets.

An assessment of data held by the department has been completed and has identified 411 datasets in total.

  • 133 are currently available
  • 17 are available through the Open Data Portal,
  • 116are currently available in other online mechanisms,
  • 119are planned for release under the department’s Open Data Strategy
  • 159 will not be released as an open dataset.Of these 159 datasets, information from 29 are available in some form following the payment of relevant fees and a further 7 are available from other sources promoted by the department (e.g. National Native Title Tribunal).

The datasets not being included are subject to privacy, security or confidentiality arrangements. Where information is held in registers, this information is available currently by undertaking individual searches after paying associated fees. This strategy includes plans to release statistical datasets on activity levels for these registers and in some cases, datasets will be released where personal information has been removed or records aggregated.

In a small number of cases, fees will continue to apply to datasets. The department has identified 10 groups of datasets for which fees will remain and five groups where fees will be removed. The fees continuing relate to the provision of searches, for which there is a legislative requirement, or where the datasets are offered in manners similar to alternate approaches in the marketplace.

While the appendix to this strategy sets out the planned dates for release of the datasets based on best estimates,the department will release the datasets sooner if possible. The following table shows the planned number of datasets to be released over the next two years.

Year / Quarter Planned for Release / Number of datasets planned for release
2013 / April - June / 9
July – September / 10
October – December / 22
2014 / January – March / 32
April – June / 19
July – September / 17
October – December / 6
2015 / January – March / 1
April - June / 3

The department remains committed to making data held and managed more easily accessible, and this strategy continues that approach. A senior executive officer has been assigned responsibility to ensure the department delivers on its Open Data Strategy commitments thereby delivering on the key open access policy principles of availability, free, accessible formats, easy to find and released within set standards and accountabilities.

Feedback on this strategy is encouraged. Please contact the department via email:

Strategic overview

Introduction

The department collects and manages an extensive and diverse range of information to enable it to deliver its responsibilities. The information consists of statistical analysis related to activity levels, information describing the geography of Queensland, information in registries which secure rights to land and natural resources and mine safety and health records. At the highest level, the information managed by the department is grouped in the following 41 information themes.

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  • Administrative boundaries
  • Cadastre
  • Compliance
  • Corporate
  • Drainage
  • Elevation
  • Explosives safety and health
  • Extractive resources
  • Geoscience and exploration
  • Historic mine sites
  • Imagery
  • Integrated foundation spatial information
  • Land registry
  • Mine land use planning
  • Mine safety and health
  • Mine safety and health generalised research
  • Mining rent and statistics
  • Mining safety and health statistics
  • Mining tenure administration
  • Native title
  • Natural resource management programs
  • Occupational health and safety
  • Petroleum and gas safety and health
  • Place names
  • Positioning infrastructure
  • Products and services
  • Property address
  • Property sales
  • State control survey
  • State land
  • Strategic cropping land
  • Transport
  • Underground water impact monitoring
  • Valuations
  • Vegetation management
  • Vegetation permits
  • Water billing
  • Water entitlements
  • Water management
  • Water management staff delegations
  • Water monitoring

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The department is focused on presenting access to information in manners suitable for its various customers and stakeholders. This access can be summarised in four ways:

  • As datasets requiring customers to load on their computers;
  • Via direct online connection services (e.g. webmap, web feature services) where the customer does not wish or need to store the data;
  • In online applications presenting information in easy ways for customers to use;
  • In reports, publications and maps where the department has interpreted and/or presented the information so that it is easy to understand.

The department’s Open Data Strategy is focussed towards increasing the number of datasets available from the department over the next two yearsconsistent with the government policy of releasing as much government data as possible to encourage the private sector to develop innovative new services in the State. This provision will to the maximum extent possible occur via open licences (i.e. Creative Commons), open data formats, be at no charge and discoverable though the Queensland Government Open Data Portal. This increasing access will occur by providing datasets and/or providing the direct online connection to the electronic point of truth for the data.

The department has a long established information asset governance practice, which ensures responsibility for both the access to information, but also the quality of the information. An analysis has been undertaken of all data collected and managed by the department as part of developing the department’s Open Data Strategy. The analysis has considered the impacts of various factors in identifying data available for release (recognising much is already available).

Information asset governance

The department manages its information assets through the delegation of the data custodian role to senior level positions in the department – Executive Director or equivalent. The data custodians have responsibility to:

  • Ensure the quality and integrity of the data to appropriate standards;
  • Engage with users to understand data improvement and coverage needed;
  • Ensure the ongoing capacity to manage and make accessible the data;
  • Provide appropriate discovery and access arrangements.

For data acquired from other parties and used by the department, the custodianship approach is applied to ensure accountability continues related to data currency and honouring licence arrangements under which the information is acquired.

This governance framework also provides clear accountability for senior executives to consider specific customer and stakeholder feedback resulting from the department’s Open Data Strategy.

Factors considered as part of Open Data Strategy development

There are a number of factors the department has taken into consideration in developing itsOpen Data Strategy.

Size of datasets

While some datasets (e.g. statistical datasets) lend themselves to be easily downloaded, many of the department’s datasets (e.g. geoscience, elevation, imagery) are extremely large (many gigabytes or terabytes).Customer feedback seeks the department to provide access in smaller geographic areas, preferably user selected (e.g. over a local area, a pipeline, or a new development, etc.). This is important particularly where Internet band-width is slow, often in rural areas.

The datasets could be extracted in full or sections and each made available as a file for download. This would mean creating replicated data copies, increasing cost, and based on known customer requirements not meeting their needs. For these large datasets, wherever possible, the department will be implementing discovery and access mechanisms allowing the customer to select their area of interest and only download that area. This will be achieved through the use of web services, and these same web services will also be made available for customers to directly connect to the data store removing the need to hold a copy of the data.

Datasets that contain personal or commercial-in-confidence information

Many datasets contain personal details which have been collected as part of applications and lodgements for rights in land and natural resources. Some of this information is held in public registers and is only able to be released on a single record basis as required by legislation in the form of a search. In some cases, where meaningful, generalised information is planned to bereleased (de-personalised or by aggregation).

In the case of some property valuation and sales data with personal details, it is only able to be supplied as a dataset where the customer has become a subscriber to the Personal Identification Information in Property Data Code of Conduct . This requires the customer to enter into a specific licence and to pay an appropriate fee to access the dataset.

Some data provided to the department is commercial-in-confidence for periods of time (e.g. some geoscience data) in accordance with legislative requirements, while in other cases the department purchases access to data from other providers to allow the department to fulfil its responsibilities. In these cases, the department does not have the rights to release the data.

Dataset formats

Long-term relationships with customers have seen the evolution of data formats over the years. Leap-frogging technology can alienate customers, and the department has supported a gradual approach to weaning customers off older formats to ensure customers continue to have access to data. Smaller regional councils and businesses have benefited from this strategy by not being forced to upgrade expensive software or seek new training. With the establishment of open data standards for formats, the department is positioning its data supply systems to meet these new requirements.

This will require customers in some cases to change the formats in which data is received. The department will be working closely with known customers to progressively implement these changes.

Removing licencing restrictions

The department has a long history of improving access to information which is consistent with this initiative. Since 2004 the department has been working on improving access by simplifying licence conditions, and through the Queensland Spatial Information Council (QSIC), sponsored work to explore and subsequently introduce Creative Commons Open Licencing in relation to spatial information.

The department is required to undertake an assessment of each dataset prior to making a decision on whether to apply an open licence. This is to ensure the department does not infringe another parties’ intellectual property.

As a result of this strategy, the department will be continuing to undertake these reviews, to maximise the number of datasets available with an open licence. The department will also be seeking to change arrangements with suppliers of data to maximise the number of datasets it receives with the least restrictive open licence, thereby ensuring that in the future data can be more easily released.

Use of distributors

The department utilises a network of private sector distributors to make a number of its data and information products available. These distribution arrangements provide significant benefits to customers particularly with respect to improved access (e.g. services being offered in hours when departmental centres are not open or being able to acquire products from multiple organisations in a single transaction). These distribution arrangements bring significant efficiencies to the department’s operations. The distribution model works when fees apply to the data or information, and the department offers discounts to distributors, reflecting the lower costs to the department in providing the data or information on a ‘wholesale’ basis.The department will continue to utilise information distributors to support effective service delivery to customers.

Pricing

Over the last eight years departmental units have been reviewing pricing of data, with many datasets now available free of charge when accessed online.

The department holds significant data in registers for the purpose of recording rights, restrictions and responsibilities. Typically this data is not released as datasets, as to do so would compromise the registers which are strictly controlled. This information is released via individual searches (often with personal information), or in the form of statistical information. Where searches are provided in accordance with legislative provisions, fees will continue to apply.

In some cases the department holds data which is similar to that available through the private sector marketplace (e.g. aerial photography). In these cases, some datasets may continue to attract fees thereby not impacting on existing private sector arrangements and ensuring the department does not contravene the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

Assisting customers to determine fitness for use of datasets

In providing datasets, the provision of meaningful information about the dataset is critical. This allows the user to be informed so they can make judgements regarding the data’s fitness for their specific purpose. Information provided can include explanations of codes and abbreviations used internally and shown in the dataset, the date of capture, any known accuracy, completeness or quality limitations. It is important to ensure the dataset name is informative, particularly where they relate to or are instruments of law.In establishing release dates, the effort to ensure this information will be available has been considered.

Data being released

The department is planning to release a significant number of datasets over the next two years covering most areas of departmental business as listed in the Appendix to this strategy document. In some cases, this will be specific business related data, in other cases, to protect personal or commercial-in-confidence information, information will be released in statistical or de-personalised forms. The planned releases can be grouped into five primary categories, spatial information, land and water rights, water monitoring, geoscience and exploration and mining safety and health.

Spatial information

The department is responsible for ten foundation themes related to Queensland’s geography and built environment. Datasets from many of these themes are already available online through the Queensland Government Information Service (QGIS) QGIS is a whole of government data download service managed by the department, with datasets available from eight departments. Over 42,000 datasets are downloaded annually, with all being free and the majority with an open licence.