Storm brews over weather data costs
Government agencies are at odds about how to end a wrangle over freeing up New Zealand’s weather data for private forecasting companies.
Documents released to Stuff under the Official Information Act show Treasury and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) disagree about how to solve the problem involving the state-owned enterprise MetService and Crown research institute the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa).
MBIE believes it could negotiate changes with both agencies to minimise their potential loss of income from releasing the largely taxpayer-funded data.
But Treasury does not want to pay for any solution. It thinks ‘‘currently planned changes’’ by Niwa and MetService will be enough and wants them to pay for those, with no or minimal cost to the Government. In a ‘‘Commercial-in-Confidence Aide Memoire’’ dated August 7 last year, Treasury says MetService is already increasing ‘‘accessibility and reusability of its observational weather data’’.
The changes are listed in an appendix, but every detail has been redacted from the released document. The document was sent to State-Owned Enterprises Minister Winston Peters, Finance Minister Grant Robertson, Associate Finance Minister David Parker and Associate StateOwned Enterprises Minister Shane Jones. Much of the data used in weather forecasting in New Zealand is collected at taxpayers’ expense.
Private forecasters such as WeatherWatch, who want to be able to compete on an equal footing, argue access to a larger slice of it should be opened up to make it available more immediately before it loses its value for forecasting.
A 2017 review of ‘‘open-access weather data’’ for MBIE found New Zealand had the most restrictive barriers out of the United States, Norway, Australia, the United Kingdom and France.
Treasury’s view of that – stated in the just-released aide memoire – was the existing open-access arrangements were appropriate and to have openness comparable to overseas would require major structural change to Niwa and MetService.
A June 2018 MBIE briefing for Minister of Research, Science and Technology Megan Woods, also released to Stuff under the Act, suggested five options for improving access to data, ranging from the status quo – option one – to structural changes of both agencies.
MBIE recommends option two – negotiating changes based on the amount of potential lost income and other risks. Treasury says option one deserves more serious consideration.