NTLIS policies, standards and guidelines

This page has information for government agencies about supplying corporate land information to external parties.

Policy

1. The supply of corporate land information to external parties will be on a commercial basis under terms and conditions determined by the data custodian agency.
2. The terms and conditions of supply will take into account:
   • Government’s objectives with regard to maximising the use of land information for sustainable economic development and developing a strong land information industry
   • costs to agencies incurred in making land information available
   • the purposes for which the information is required
   • intergovernmental and other bilateral agreements
   • national competition policy.
3. Supply of corporate land information between government business divisions and other Northern Territory Government agencies will be on the same basis as between those agencies and other external commercial organisations.

Definitions

External party means any individual, company or organisation external to the Northern Territory Government, whether in the public, private or academic sectors of the community.

Cost of transfer means the costs incurred in extracting and delivering information to a client that would otherwise not have been incurred if the transaction had not taken place. 

It does not include costs normally incurred by an agency in managing data or the original costs of collection and maintenance.

Responsibility

Chief executives of custodian agencies shall have responsibility for implementation of this policy.

Implementation

This policy recognises that many agencies have in place agreements with external organisations to exchange land information at cost of transfer.

Where custodian agencies engage in commercial supply of data and/or products they should develop a marketing plan which defines:

• the information and products to be supplied
• the target client base and potential uses
• the costs involved in collecting, managing and delivering the information and products
• prices that should be applied to the information and products
• charges that should be applied for commercial and non-commercial use
• opportunities for involvement of the private sector in value-adding and marketing activities.

The Location Intelligence Group will:

• review marketing plans to ensure consistency across government and equity in supply to the community
• develop for use by custodian agencies and in consultation with NT Treasury, guidelines for pricing and charging data and associated products.

Background

Government has significant assets in the land information it has collected and manages as part of normal operations. 

This information resource has potential value to other levels of government, the private sector and academia for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. 

It is reasonable that a return should be obtained from such uses for the investment in and on- going maintenance of the information resource.

This commercial return to government should be balanced against other objectives of economic development, ensuring information is available for community decision making and sharing of information under bilateral agreements.  

At the same time it should be recognised that providing information at no cost ignores the fact that it has a real value that should be recognised by the users.

Though there is significant potential in the private sector to develop value-added information products and services there will be some cases where it is in the public interest for specific products and services to be retained within the Northern Territory Government. 

Custodian agencies must justify such cases.

Principles

A return on the investment in information collection and management is appropriate where the information is to be used for commercial purposes by the client.

The level of return should be reasonable and equitable and not be such that commercial use of the information is inhibited or prevented.

Where available information is supplied for non-commercial purposes the charges imposed should be confined to those costs incurred in extracting, processing and distributing the information and not include the costs of the information itself.

Custodian agencies should not use their monopoly advantage with regard to the base data to compete with or otherwise inhibit the role of the private sector in value-adding and marketing information products and services.