Whatungarongaro te tangata toitū te whenua: while people come and go the land remains

Gaye Searancke, Secretary of Land Information and Chief Executive of Toitū Te Whenua, Land Information New Zealand (LINZ)

LINZ is the Government’s lead agency for location and property information, Crown land and managing overseas investment.

The title of this piece, our organisational whakatauki, underpins our role to understand, develop and care for whenua, moana and arawai.

We have developed four outcomes across the different dimensions of our work; high-value geographic and property information, a world-class property system, making best use of the Crown Estate, and ensuring the overseas investment regime serves New Zealand’s changing needs.

In addition, in 2016 we identified three key challenges facing New Zealand, namely fresh water, resilience and climate change, and the pressures on urban areas. We prioritise our work in ways that contribute to those challenges while at the same time delivering on our core responsibilities.    

LINZ is well-grounded and aligned with the Aotearoa Circle’s pursuit of sustainable prosperity and shared responsibility for long-term investment in New Zealand’s natural resources. The Public Service Act 2020 requires us to take a strategic approach to our nation’s challenges and we are committed to playing our role.

But we are under no illusions – this is a journey, and while there is evidence of good work underway we collectively have a long way to go.

So how do we get there and how can government agencies lead and contribute to system change?

We can use our expertise; be proactive and ambitious to find and deliver the public value that government agencies can create.  This includes overcoming traditional barriers and working harder across the public service, including with regional and local government for our customers.

To this end at LINZ we are increasingly putting our high-quality data to work and partnering to collate and aggregate; creating powerful, accessible national data and information assets to underpin decision making about our greatest asset, Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Elevation data collected using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) airborne laser scanning is one example.

This data produces highly accurate 3D maps – critical tools to support decision making in the natural and built environment.

Uses include hazard and climate change modelling, infrastructure planning, and habitat and water catchment mapping – reducing the risks of flooding and improving the efficiency of inputs such as fertiliser and irrigation. 

Seeing that all levels of government were beginning to individually invest and seek funding to develop elevation data, our team saw an opportunity to add value.

In 2018 we initiated and now lead a joint project with the provincial growth fund which is co-funding 10 participating regions to invest in a nationally consistent elevation data set.

Through central co-ordination we now ensure the standard of data captured is consistent, of high quality and critically, will be made openly available through LINZ’s world leading Data Service, known as the LDS. We were also able to leverage our existing contacts and relationships to ensure that regions and the provincial growth fund get the greatest value from suppliers.

Similar examples exist in our hydrographic work where new technologies used to create modern electronic navigational charts (a regulatory requirement on LINZ) now produce vast and rich information about the seafloor and surrounds. 

Recognising this, in 2019 LINZ led the establishment of the New Zealand Marine Geospatial Information Working Group, supporting collaboration and improving data reuse across New Zealand’s marine stakeholders.

Through the group, our hydrographic data is being utilised by other agencies to understand the impacts of climate change on our marine environment and, for example by Te Papa Atawhai, the Department of Conservation for habitat mapping.

This rich data is available at data.govt.nz, allowing innovation from researchers around the globe.

These are two examples of using our expertise to align on value, inject co-ordination and build public good environmental assets for all sectors to access and deploy.

In the property system LINZ is responsible for delivering core survey and title services and stewarding the regulation of these systems over the long term.

As part of our system leadership, we’re actively exploring how property data can be connected across central and local government to provide better information for decision making in areas such as urban development, sustainable transport infrastructure and land use.

This includes early work with a number of local authorities to connect rating valuation data with LINZ’s survey and title datasets, and we’re aiming to extend this to all councils in the near future.    

Our programme to rebuild Landonline will modernise the technology platform underpinning the survey and title system and over time will support greater integration of processes and data across the property system.  

The arrival of Covid-19 has provided an unexpected catalyst for change and an opportunity to reset at many levels. It’s brought a focus on ‘local,’ our individual and community mobility, and of course our health, all of which have direct links to environment and sustainability. 

The global impact of Covid-19 has also exposed New Zealand’s unique environmental brand – underlining the strengths and vulnerabilities of tourism and our wider exports’ brand advantage.

For LINZ the Covid-19 response has also provided new direction.

In mid-2020 the LINZ biosecurity programme was allocated $40m over four years from the Government’s Jobs for Nature Covid-19 recovery package. Combined with recent Budget increases this has tripled our funding for biosecurity and will deliver 70-90 new jobs.

This funding allows us to not only expand our aquatic and terrestrial biosecurity control programme on the extensive Crown lands and waterways we manage, but also invest in biodiversity restoration and community engagement on the ground to create enduring change.

To achieve this we are developing strategic and data led projects with community and iwi/rūnanga in the Mackenzie Basin, Canterbury’s braided rivers, Te Arawa Lakes, the Waikato River, Lake Dunstan, and at wider LINZ managed sites in Otago and Southland. 

Our team is embracing this new focus on biodiversity and the opportunity to develop long term strategy under the canopy of Te Mana o te Taiao Aotearoa-New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy 2020.

Within all this how can we continue to expand and amplify our work? 

Through partnerships, integration, connection. 

To ensure our information assets and investments on the ground inspire and inform core planning by government, the private sector, the research sector – everyone – we need more collaboration, more dialogue about what’s possible with the data and lands we hold. 

Driving a more agile and customer-centric organisation at the same time as delivering our core regulatory responsibilities to achieve this is my aim as CE. 

We welcome engagement. We can create greater value by connecting with others – but only if our work is visible, accessible, promoted and applied for the greater good – that is our challenge, and I look forward to working with you all.

Ngā mihi

Read more about LINZ’s core responsibilities and work here. In other examples of partnerships underway you can read about our plans to improve GPS capability through a satellite-based augmentation system in partnership with the Australian federal government here, and our work with the MacKenzie Basin Agency Alignment Programme, co-ordinating consenting and improvements to environmental management here.