Strategic Context

LINZ is affected by a broad range of influences and trends that impact on our priorities. This section describes important trends in our operating environment and the associated strategic issues and opportunities that determine our focus as an organisation.

LINZ's operating environment

Our operating environment is increasingly complex and dynamic. Major developments affecting our business include:

• Instability in the economic system. Instability in the global and national economic system affects us directly. Sales activity in the New Zealand property market directly impacts our revenue, because a proportion of our income is sourced from fees associated with property transactions. Also, our role in setting policy for economically important land and data, as well as our involvement in decisions regarding overseas investment in New Zealand, demands we maintain a strong emphasis on the economic impact of our activities.
  
  
• Increasing importance of geospatial information. For many nations, access to geospatial information has become a critical national priority. Geospatial information is a core component of New Zealand’s society and economy and is increasingly critical to commercial products and services, as well as core government functions. Significant developments in areas such as satellite imagery, global positioning systems (GPS), location-based services, virtual reality, and increasingly diverse uses of the Internet are changing the way people gather, store and use this information. These trends create opportunities and challenges for us as we look for ways to maximise the long-term value of this information to our society and economy.
  
  
• Changing dynamics in information and knowledge management. The way knowledge is produced, accessed, distributed and owned is changing in significant ways. Globally, we are seeing the rise of open-source approaches to knowledge development, as communities (as opposed to individuals and organisations) generate and share information. This trend may have a significant impact on the way geospatial information is gathered, maintained and distributed, particularly as more data is generated by citizens. Related to this, is the fact that the expertise needed to achieve our outcomes is increasingly spread across multiple organisations or countries, so we will need to give more emphasis to how we facilitate this knowledge. We will need to understand these developments and opportunities and align our policy, regulatory and legal frameworks accordingly.
  
  
• Changes in how New Zealand’s natural resources are used and managed. The earth’s finite natural resources are under increasing pressure. One impact of this complex issue is that natural resources such as fresh water and air may have rights, responsibilities and restrictions applied to them in the future. Because of our expertise in managing the transaction and access system for land rights, we may have a role to play in recording and enabling access to information about rights for these other precious resources.
  
  
• Changes in how we communicate and collaborate. Increasingly, the outcomes we seek to achieve, and the systems we exist in, have interdependencies with other agencies, with stakeholders and customers, and with broader communities of interest. We will need to strengthen our customer-centric approach across all our products and services, and, recognising our broader focus on land information market leadership, ensure our collaboration and communication practices adapt to this. We will need to establish stronger relationships with the private sector, local government and academia in order to identify and understand trends and issues, and then work together to move forward.

Strategic issues

These developments provide a context for us to review and focus our priorities, to ensure we remain relevant and responsive to our evolving environment and the needs of New Zealanders. A number of strategic issues associated with these developments demand our focus, including:

• Becoming more agile as an organisation. The dynamic nature of our operating environment means we need to respond quickly to shifting demands and priorities. Improving our agility will enable us to align quickly to emerging national priorities and support other departments more effectively – for example, being able to respond to an increased volume of Treaty settlements between now and 2014. We will give more emphasis to our planning and prioritisation framework to ensure our efforts over the coming years remain focused on those activities delivering the greatest value to New Zealand.
  
  
• Building our capability to facilitate collaborative solutions. Much of our future success will be driven by our ability to work with a range of stakeholders to solve complex problems that involve competing interests. For example, we administer land that is economically important and environmentally sensitive and therefore subject to competing pressures from multiple groups. To work through these issues constructively, we will need to strengthen our relationships with stakeholders, improve our engagement capabilities and understand the systemic impacts of our activities.
  
  
• Maintaining operational excellence while co-creating New Zealand’s future land development market. We will need to maintain the systems and processes that deliver certainty of property rights, while working with other stakeholders to plan and create the ideal future state of New Zealand’s land development market. Related to this are the challenges of continually assessing the role of government with respect to geospatial data, and enabling a diverse range of interested parties to integrate geospatial data and systems.
  
  
• Broadening our impact while maintaining efficiency. It is crucial our services deliver excellent value for money. As we focus on the activities that deliver the greatest impact for New Zealand, we will need to ensure these are performed as efficiently as possible.
  
  

These trends and issues provide the basis for determining our priorities, but this is not an exhaustive list. Other important issues and opportunities are reflected in the description of our outcomes and key initiatives.