Changes coming to the website

We drafted and tested possible changes to the way this website organises information. Based on that testing, we will make improvements to the website over the next few months. This blog is a heads up, so that you are best prepared for these planned changes. Also, we continue to welcome any feedback about the changes.

What is changing?

There are several pages that will be moving to new locations - hopefully, locations that make more sense to you. There are also several heading and top-level navigation (the links at the very top of the page) that we will be moving or renaming.

For example, we used to hold or publish information about open data events in the ‘Events’ page. You could get to this page by clicking the top-level navigation link at the top of the page. This was a good way to organise the site when there were more open data events and our strategy involved prioritising information about those events.

Now that we have fewer events and our strategy has shifted, it no longer makes sense to have a specific page on the website dedicated to this information.

So, we will soon be archiving this page and removing the top-level navigation link. We will describe all future events in blog posts.

Other planned changes include:

• The ‘Open data’ and ‘Use data’ sections will become sub-sections inside the ‘Manage data’ section. The top-level navigation links to these sections will be removed.
• We will make a new ‘Catalogue guide’ section to collect all the information and guidance related to the open data catalogue. Most of this information is already present on data.govt.nz, but it is found in different places. We want to bring it all together to help those wanting to use the data catalogue.
• We will make a new ‘Leadership’ section to bring together information about the Government Chief Data Steward, the Data Strategy and Roadmap, the data-related communities of practice, and the data-related governance groups. The aim of this section is to bring together everything you need to know about what is happening outside, between, and across government organisations.

Will all my bookmarks and links stop working?

The changes will happen gradually. We will move or change pages on the website in the following steps:

1. We will add a notice to the top of the page telling you what will happen to the page and when.
2. We will set up re-directs or remove the page from the site’s navigation – links to the page will still work.
3. If we plan to remove the page, we will add another notice telling you when – very few pages will be completely removed, and all links will be re-directed to a related page.

What if the changes make it worse?

You are welcome to provide feedback on any changes that are planned, and we will make sure that we warn you at least two weeks before we make any changes.

Providing a website to share information with a diverse audience is hard and nothing we do will be perfect for everyone. But we will do our best, based on testing and evidence, to help you find what you need.

Will you be removing pages for good?

Most of the pages that we remove from the website will be merely ‘hidden’. That means links will continue to work and the information will be still there, but maybe in a different place.

If we choose to remove a page completely, we will still have access to the content. If you need that information, we are happy to provide it to you. And, if it turns out that we were wrong and many people still want that information on the website, then we will put it back.

Contact us

If you’d like more information, have a question, or want to provide feedback, email datalead@stats.govt.nz.

Photo by Charlie Firth on Unsplash.