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

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

Purpose of the taxonomy

The Infrastructure Reference Taxonomy is used to:

• identify duplication of infrastructures 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 function within and across agencies, and corresponding opportunities for investment to improve customer centric service delivery, and related agency, cluster and sector support functions
• map agency, cluster and sector services
• define business capabilities
• categorise the Government Digital Standards Catalogue.

Understand the taxonomy structure

The reference taxonomies are categorised into different levels.

The Infrastructure Reference Taxonomy is has up to 4 levels. Domains are the top level, areas are the second level, categories are the third level, and sub-categories are the fourth level.

Each taxonomy category has a unique ID, for example I1.

The Data and Information Reference Taxonomy has 4 domains:

• I1 — Platform
• I2 — Network
• I3 — Facility
• I4 — User Equipment.

Platform

The Platform domain includes hardware architecture and a software framework, where the combination allows software, particularly application software, to run.

For the purposes of the taxonomy, platforms include a computer’s architecture, operating system, and software platforms that emulate entire hardware platforms such as system virtualisation.

Network

The Network domain describes the areas needed to allow efficient communication between devices via email, instant messaging, chat rooms, phone, video phone calls, and video conferencing.

A network allows sharing of files, data and other types of information, giving authorised users the ability to access information stored on other computers on the network.

Facility

The Facility domain addresses how and/or where a particular asset is acquired, deployed and operated.

User Equipment

The User Equipment domain, previously End User Equipment, provides the physical interfaces between end users and a provided suite of user applications. It includes instruments and/or devices for a particular purpose or use. It includes ICT devices with all platform and facility types.

Download the taxonomies

The taxonomies are available on data.govt.nz. You can download or access the Infrastructure 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.