Clearly assigning data and information custodianship and setting out roles and responsibilities has benefits. Those include reducing the costs of data collection, storage and maintenance across government as well as improving data accuracy and quality.

These benefits will partly flow from the establishment of single sources of authority for specific datasets and reduced duplication of information management effort across agencies.

This requires the identification of custodians who would be responsible for the collection, maintenance and provision of their agencies’ core value datasets.

The Data and Information Custodianship Policy is based on a set of principles for the management and maintenance of government data and information assets. Those are set out in the Policy (from page 8).

Custodianship records for foundation spatial datasets have been developed and are maintained by Land and Property Information. Guidelines to assist in implementation of the policy for spatial data will be published on the ICT Strategy website.

The Department of Finance and Services will maintain a central register of custodian records for non-spatial datasets and make this available to agencies via Data NSW. A template is provided as an attachment to this Circular.

Direction

Under the NSW Government Data and Information Custodianship Policy, agencies are required to define their core value datasets and to develop custodianship records for those datasets using the attached template. Send completed custodianship records to [email protected].

Laurie Glanfield
Director General

This circular applies to all NSW government agencies. In accordance with Premier's Memorandum M1999-19 Applicability of Memoranda and Circulars to State Owned Corporations, the policy does not apply to State Owned Corporations although it is recommended for adoption.