The categories in the Data and Information Reference Taxonomy provide the basis for developing specific data and information reference architectures and patterns, and defining business capability.

These reference architectures and patterns can be more readily used across government where the terms from the reference taxonomy are used consistently.

Purpose of the taxonomy

The Data and Information Reference Taxonomy is used to:

• identify duplication of data and information assets within and across agencies, and corresponding opportunities for cost reduction
• identify opportunities for collaboration, shared services, and solution reuse in agency IT portfolios
• identify gaps in data and information within and across agencies, and corresponding opportunities for investment to improve customer centric service delivery, and related sector, cluster and agency support functions
• map and catalogue sector, cluster and agency data and information assets
• define business capabilities.

Understand the taxonomy structure

The reference taxonomies are categorised into different levels.

The Data and Information Reference Taxonomy has up to 4 levels. Domains are the top level, subjects are the second level, topics are the third level, and sub-topics are the fourth level.

Each taxonomy category has a unique ID, for example D1.

The Data and Information Reference Taxonomy has 3 domains:

• D1 — Motivators
• D2 — Entities
• D3 — Activities.

Motivators

Information relating to authority or governance. Motivators contain information in the form of potential, imagined or desired states. These types of information assets include information generated through the application of knowledge (experience), imagination and intellectual ideas (concepts). However, this does not make its classification any less critical.

The taxonomy contains 3 subjects which relate to Motivators:

• Plans
• Controls
• Contracts.

Entities

Information relating to instances of entities or things. Tangible items that the business must know about and for which different instances can be uniquely identified or distinguished from one another.

The taxonomy contains 3 subjects that relate to Entities:

• Parties
• Places
• Items.

Activities

Information needed to track or monitor moments, periods or events that occur over time. This type of information is focused on occurrences that must be tracked for business reasons or represent a specific point in the evolution of 'The Business'.

For example, in order to enable business activity monitoring to assess conformance with performance measures, an agency may capture information about the execution of key processes, such as the number of transactions performed.

The taxonomy contains 3 subjects which related to Activities:

• Cases
• Events
• Services.

Download the taxonomies

The taxonomies are available on data.govt.nz. You can download or access the Data and Information Reference Taxonomy or all of the reference taxonomies together.

• GEA-NZ Reference taxonomies modelling files — data.govt.nz
  Data sets of all the reference taxonomies or each individual taxonomy, in XML format, exported using XMI 2.5.1.
• GEA-NZ All reference taxonomies — data.govt.nz 
  Data sets of all reference taxonomies, in both XLSX and CSV formats which can be either downloaded or accessed via the data.govt.nz API.