Two major environmental databases are set to become more accessible and easier to use following the re-release of these digital maps by the Ministry for the Environment.

The Land Cover Database and the Land Environments New Zealand classification layers, widely used by agencies in environmental and resource management planning, will now be issued online with a Creative Commons Attribution licence.

Ministry for the Environment’s Len Brown says this will promote the free exchange of environmental data, allowing more people access, use and benefit from the data.

Peter Harrison has put together a strong submission to the Commerce Committee which is currently reviewing the Patent Bill going through Parliament. The NZOSS, like many others in the industry, is calling for a specific exclusion of Software as something that should be patentable.

The full submission is available here.

On June 5th I wrote to the State Services Commissioner and the Ministry for Economic Development . In my role as President of the NZOSS I was seeking “advice on government agency procurement of software products following the recently concluded G2009 Microsoft negotiations.”

In particular I asked for “your confirmation that government agencies are required to tender for software procurement so that our member companies and others have the opportunity to tender open source products and services.”

In the past few weeks the NZOSS has written to two ministers and the Auditor General regarding the G2009 negotiations and how Government in general effectively deals exclusively with Microsoft for certain technologies.

Minister Steven Joyce's office told us to direct our communications to Minister Tony Ryall, the Minister for the State Services Commission. SSC is the central Government agency who lead the negotiations with Microsoft that collapsed recently.

The core of our complaint to the Auditor General is expressed in the following statement:

If you are a government agency this is just about the worst possible outcome. Now is the time to consider alternatives to Microsoft. We must never again allow our Government to get into this situation. State Services Commission press release follows:

Outcome of G2009 Microsoft negotiations

26 May 2009

The State Services Commission today announced the government has concluded negotiations with Microsoft on a pan-government agreement for the next three years.

It became apparent during discussions that a formal agreement with Microsoft is no longer appropriate.

STOP G2009
Wellington, 14 May 2009

The New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS) is calling for an immediate halt to the G2009 “All of Government” negotiations currently being completed with Microsoft. The Society will be seeking a complete review of the G2009 procurement process by the Auditor-General.

“Government procurement practices are built around the notion of delivering value for money to the New Zealand taxpayer through a contestable process.” says Society President Don Christie.

A while ago I caused a bit of a stir within Microsoft when I used the headline "Old Dog, same old tricks". I tried to think of a less contentious way of describing Microsoft's support for ODF1.1, as released in SP2 for the MSOffice suite. I have failed.

STARTS
Time to rethink public sector technology
Wellington, 29 April 2009

New Zealand Open Source Society is calling for far greater use of free software in the New Zealand public sector. The renewed call comes at a time when central government agencies have been conducting line-by-line reviews of their expenditure and the UK government has released sweeping policy changes to put open source on an even footing with proprietary software.

I will comment publicly on the NZOSS site about this. I am in no way connected to GLS, Vovo or Laurence Millar and know nothing about the GLS project other than what has be placed in the public domain recently.

However, the loss of Laurence from NZ Government circles is a crying shame. He brought a lot of vision and very broad experience to his role and this will be very hard to replace. I can't think of any other government CIO that has his background.

For immediate release.

23 March 2009

The New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS) is pleased to see the abandonment of the unfair Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment (New Technologies) Act, a move supported by the vast majority of NZOSS members and the ICT community in New Zealand.

Prime Minister John Key announced on Monday that the Government will throw out the controversial section, and Justice minister Simon Power will now initiate a rewrite.