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New South Wales Custodianship Guidelines
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
7. ROLE OF COORDINATING AGENCY
New South Wales Custodianship Guidelines
for Natural Resources Information
14 August 1997
Version 1.0
These Guidelines have been developed by the NSW Natural Resources Information Management Steering Group, established as part of the implementation of the NSW Natural Resources Information Management Strategy.
The principle of custodianship has been adopted by the New South Wales Government as the means of ensuring accountability for the care and maintenance of natural resources information within the public sector. Custodianship is seen as being at the core of efficient and effective natural resources information management.
The overriding philosophy in the activities associated with custodianship is that NSW custodian agencies manage the natural resources information as trustees in a partnership to enable the integration and wide spread use of natural resource information for the benefit of the wider community and the State of New South Wales.
The principle of custodianship assigns to an agency certain rights and responsibilities for the collection and management of natural resources dataset on behalf of the New South Wales Government and the community it serves. The rights and responsibilities include the right to set marketing conditions for the information and responsibilities regarding the maintenance and quality of the information. It also ensures accessibility of the information and provides a recognised contact point for the distribution, transfer and sharing of the information. Custodianship of a dataset will be endorsed by the CEO's.
Users of natural resource data have the right to access data and metadata and freely use this data within the limitations of access agreements. Users also must be consulted by the custodian about their needs. In return they have the responsibility to inform the custodian of any errors and omissions in the data.
There is a need to co-ordinate agency the wide range of custodians.
An agency will be made responsible for assignment and review of custodianship.
It will create and make widely accessible information about where to find
existing natural resource datasets. Finally it will ensure State policies
and standards align with those at national level.
A custodian of a dataset, or a component of that dataset, is an agency having the responsibility to ensure that the dataset is collected and maintained according to specifications and priorities determined by consultation with the user community, and made available to the community under conditions and in a format that conform with standards and policies established for the national and NSW spatial data infrastructure.
The concept of custodianship assigns to an agency certain rights and responsibilities associated with the capture and management of information on behalf of the State of New South Wales. Custodianship is not synonymous with ownership. Rather, it views all information captured by a government agency as forming part of a State's corporate information resource, and custodians are appointed to manage information about that resource on behalf of the government.
Custodianship provides a means of achieving accountability for and reliability of information sources. While everyone has a right to capture information, this would result in unnecessary duplication and inconsistency in the way information is captured and maintained. It is therefore logical that information suppliers be made responsible for the care and maintenance of the information and that they share this information with others. The concept of custodianship is further expanded in the six basic principles (see 2. Principles of Custodianship)
The preferred custodians should be those which have the greatest need to guarantee the accuracy and the integrity of the information. Consequently, custodians are in the best position of being able to advise of the information's fitness for use.
Custodianship does not necessarily mean that all data is captured and maintained by the custodian, but the custodian maintains the responsibility for quality and availability of the data.
1.2 The need for and benefits of custodianship
The effective management of natural resources information is dependent upon reconciling the need to minimise duplication in information capture and maintenance and the need to maximise access to information. Custodianship is viewed as a key component in achieving effective management.
There are advantages in custodianship to be gained by agencies, the New South Wales Government and its clients.
In adhering to the responsibilities for custodianship as set out in these Guidelines, a custodian is most likely to become the preferred supplier for information under its custody, because it will have the most accurate and reliable information.
Custodianship also eliminates unnecessary duplication of capturing and maintaining information. This in turn allows funds previously spent on these activities to be reallocated to other projects within government, thus achieving the maximum benefit from investment.
Ultimately, users need to access and integrate information. Custodianship lessens the confusion regarding sources of accurate information relevant to their needs. It also means that the user can be confident that the information within government is accurate, complete, identifiable and accessible.
1.3 Custodianship guidelines within Australia
In April 1990, the Australia New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC) published "Issues in Land Information Management, Paper No.1 - Data Custodianship/Trusteeship". The aim of the paper was to assist organisations, government agencies and jurisdictions to better manage their land information. A key element of the National Strategy on Land Information Management is the principle that land information is a corporate resource. Also effective and economical land information management requires that organisations involved in the collection and management of land related data, share and transfer that data.
The Issues Paper is currently being reviewed by the ANZLIC Advisory Committee in light of the development of jurisdictional policies/guidelines since the paper was written in 1990. The NSW Guidelines align with new draft guidelines being prepared.
Guidelines for custodianship have already been prepared in Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania. Guidelines have also been developed for Commonwealth agencies by the Commonwealth Spatial Data Committee.
This paper is based on work by the Australia New Zealand Information Council (ANZLIC) and the Western Australian Land Information System (WALIS).
These guidelines establish a framework for the implementation of custodianship in NSW as part of the Natural Resource Information Management Strategy. Separate policies for data access (directories, licensing and pricing) and standards (description, quality and transfer) are being developed. Where relevant the custodianship guidelines need to refer to these policies.
In these guidelines no distinction is made between fundamental and other datasets. The establishment of custodianship for fundamental datasets has priority.
The scope of the Guidelines includes natural resource and other related information. It includes any information which is needed to manage natural resources. It is expected that the guidelines can easily be applied in other areas.
Identification of (fundamental) datasets and their custodians will result from these guidelines but is not part it.
The guidelines only relate to datasets collected in the public interest
by NSW government agencies. The guidelines do not cover issues such as
funding, cost, commercial exploitation of information and privacy. These
are matters for individual custodians acting within policies set down by
the NSW government.
2. PRINCIPLES OF CUSTODIANSHIP
The concept of custodianship is described in six basic principles:
Custodians do not own the information but are the trustees on behalf of the State. The concept is designed to emphasise co-operation in sharing information among agencies, rather than competition between them.
The custodianship belongs to the agency, not the business unit that performs most of the tasks related to the custodianship on behalf of the agency.
2.2 Setting and use of standards
The use of standards to determine how the information will be collected, described and issued is the most important commitment that an agency makes when agreeing to become a custodian. Custodians should seek input from users to assist in defining appropriate standards for information in their custody. These include standards for the access, collection, classification, description, accuracy, quality, format and structure of the information. Custodians should set their standards within the state and national framework.
If an agency is designated the custodian for certain information but is not in a position to collect and maintain the information, it still has an obligation to establish the required information standards so that other agencies can commence collection of the information according to these standards.
2.3 Collection and maintenance of information
Custodian agencies maintain plans for information collection, conversion and maintenance in conformity with the needs of users. Consequently they should liaise with users and other affected parties when making any significant information management or dataset changes. The significance of any changes must be determined by the custodian, informed by their knowledge of stakeholder requirements. The custodian agency is also responsible for negotiating the terms and conditions under which other agencies collect and maintain the information on its behalf.
Custodians are not expected to collect information for which there is no internal requirement. They should justify the collection of information for which they are responsible in terms of their own needs. These will generally reflect either the agency's statutory responsibilities or Government priorities. If other agencies require more information, they may:
In acting as the authoritative source for information under its custodianship, the custodian agency becomes the preferred supplier of this information. This lessens confusion for users and overcomes the accuracy and reliability problems that may be encountered when supposedly identical information is held separately by several agencies, where several agencies contribute information to a common database, or where information provided by different agencies is combined. The custodian is also likely to have more up-to-date information than other agencies. As the agency responsible for setting the standards, the custodian is also in the position of being able to advise the client on the source, currency and completeness of the information.
A custodian may delegate some or all of its responsibilities for a part of its natural resources information to another organisation. However the custodian cannot delegate its accountability for the integrity, quality and accessibility of that information. The custodian should ensure that its full responsibilities can still be met through any arrangement it may make with another organisation. Where a custodian agency agrees to another agency marketing its information, or producing a value added service or information product, it should draw up a formal agreement with the other agency.
Where an agency has been appointed as the custodian of the dataset,
it must ensure that access to the information is maintained. If an agency
out sources the collection of information for which it is a custodian,
it should ensure that the information continues to be collected and maintained
according to agreed specifications and access is maintained.
3. RESPONSIBILITIES OF CUSTODIANS
To achieve the purposes of custodianship custodian is responsible and accountable for:
Custodians have the right to enter into agreements with other agencies or providers on the collection, management and distribution of the information under their custody. The custodian remains responsible for the quality, currency, completeness and availability of the information.
Custodians have the right to set marketing conditions within Government policies for the promotion and sale of the information under their custody.
Custodians have the right to establish agreements with value adding
resellers. Agencies that have significantly contributed to the compilation
the information should get a proportional share of the financial benefits
of such agreements.
User agencies gain from better access to quality information. In turn they give up part of their ability to meet their own needs from internal resources. To ensure that user agencies have influence on the information management process they must be consulted by custodians so they can state their information needs. The custodian has to consider these needs together with those of other users and its own needs when planning data maintenance and collection.
User agencies must be informed by the custodian on the planning and progress of data collection and maintenance.
User agencies have free access to the metadata on the information held by the custodian.
User agencies can use the information within their agency as they wish considering the limitations of use as described by the custodian.
User agencies may contribute to periodical review of a custodian's performance.
User agencies have responsibilities towards the custodian agencies:
7. ROLE OF COORDINATING AGENCY
To ensure that the implementation of the custodianship policy is successful a co-ordinating agency must be appointed. There are certain tasks that cannot be performed by an individual custodian or an user agency.
The co-ordinating agency has the following responsibilities:
The allocation of custodianship is designed to:
The criteria (not in any order of priority) used to assign custodianship are situations where an agency:
In the interests of maintaining completeness in the information holdings within the State, the agency relinquishing its custodianship has the responsibility of working with the co-ordinating agency in finding another agency to take on the role of custodian. This responsibility is particularly important in the situation where the information has a status of being a fundamental dataset.
Assignment of custodianship
In the process of appointing a custodian the following step can be identified:
The custodian will :
Identification of datasets.
To assist users to access information relevant to their needs and to lessen confusion regarding what datasets it consist of, it is important that all datasets are precisely defined, documented and named by the custodian.
Standards for datasets
Custodians and end users should establish agreement on:
Datasets in NRIMS are:
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