NTLIS policies, standards and guidelines

This page has information for government agencies about custodianship of corporate land information.

Policy

1. All corporate land information collected and managed by Northern Territory Government agencies forms part of the Territory’s strategic information resource and those agencies will act as Custodians of it on behalf of the community.
2. All corporate land information will be managed by agencies according to the principles of data custodianship.
3. Where corporate land information sets are composed or derived from fundamental data sets the principles of data custodianship will also be applied to those fundamental data sets.

Definitions

Corporate land information consists of spatially referenced data sets that are essential to support the business operations of more than one agency and includes composite or derived data sets or products required for decision making

A fundamental data set is one that cannot be derived from another data set.

Responsibility

Chief executives will be accountable for the application of this policy to the land information and data sets for which they have accepted custodianship responsibility.

The NT Land Information Management Coordination Group will coordinate the allocation of land information and data sets to agencies that wish to become custodians.

All Northern Territory Government officers involved in the management and use of corporate land information are responsible for the application of this policy.

Implementation

Implementation of this policy will be through custodianship guidelines developed and maintained by the Location Intelligence Group.

These guidelines will clearly define:

• the principles on which custodianship is based and how they should be applied
• the responsibilities of custodians
• the rights of custodians
• the criteria for allocating custodianship
• the responsibilities of information users
• agreed management processes for information products.

Background

Many agencies involved in planning, land and resources management and land development need to share the same spatial information.  

In addition to users in custodian agencies, many other public and private sector users of such information wish to be assured that the information is accurate and reliable.

In such an environment it is essential that there is some means of accountability for the accuracy, completeness, currency, integrity and security of land information and data sets used by more than one agency. 

Data custodianship provides a means to achieve this by allocating clearly defined responsibilities and rights to an agency for data set that need to be shared with others.

An agency that accepts custodianship responsibility for a data set becomes the authoritative source for all information relating to that data set and of the data itself.

Principles

The principles on which this policy is based are generally accepted by the Australian and international land information industry and are fully described in the custodianship guidelines.