Chief Executive's Introduction

Land Information New Zealand's Statement of Intent for 2010-13 outlines our plans for helping to grow the economy and improving the services we deliver to New Zealanders.

LINZ’s core roles are managing land, information and transactions. We are responsible for 8% of this country’s land, for delivering geospatial information that underpins many essential services, and for providing New Zealanders and businesses with secure property rights.

The Government has set three priorities for us, two of which are in the area of land management. We will work with the Office of Treaty Settlements and other agencies to meet the Government’s deadline of 2014 for negotiating historic Treaty of Waitangi claims. We will also continue to implement the new direction for iconic Crown land in the South Island high country by ensuring the rents we set allow run-holders to manage their land productively and protect its value.

The third priority area is where LINZ can use the expertise and knowledge we have developed since our inception in 1996 to create new growth for New Zealand: the potential in geospatial information.

Over 12 years, LINZ developed an automated system for transacting and registering land rights – Landonline. This major project transformed us from a traditional paper-based organisation into an agency that uses e-delivery in our core services. Landonline brought New Zealanders a world-class system for transacting land rights, and productivity gains to the public sector and the land development market. This helped us develop the capability to further leverage our expertise, and unlock more value from the geospatial information we hold, thereby creating additional opportunities to contribute to greater economic growth for New Zealand.

At the heart of our plans for 2010–13 is geospatial information. We will champion the national strategy for geospatial information, by encouraging and supporting the delivery of accessible, available and shareable geospatial information to New Zealanders. We will also ensure our own data is more readily available for others to use. These actions will significantly help to remove some of the barriers to accessing and using geospatial information innovatively, which currently cost New Zealand an estimated $481 million in productivity-related benefits every year.

As you will read in this Statement of Intent, ‘how’ we deliver our services is as important as ‘what’ we deliver.

Our results in many areas will depend on our ability to work more collaboratively with our customers, stakeholders and other agencies. Collaboration will bring us opportunities to develop the most effective solutions to complex issues, and share knowledge and services, to both save money and create value for New Zealanders. That is why we are leading work to develop coordinated land use management systems with other government agencies involved in the natural resources management sector, and why we are creating research and development linkages with geospatial agencies and businesses across the Tasman.

LINZ has a good track record in performing successfully within our baseline funding. Over the next three years, we will increase that existing focus on efficiency by putting in place a more thorough system for improving and measuring our performance. We will also increase our organisational ‘agility’ to ensure that, regardless of economic conditions, we can deliver our core services, the priorities set annually by Government, and the longer-term ambitions of our strategic direction.

Colin MacDonald
Chief Executive