About us
NZRIS is being developed by a programme team based at MBIE. Find out more about the background to NZRIS and how we’ve got to where we are today.
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Programme team
The NZRIS programme team is based at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. It is based within the Science and Innovation team within the Evidence and Insights Group. The team is also supported by an ICT project team that is building the technology solution that will support and enable the new system.
You can get in touch any time by emailing nzris@mbie.govt.nz
The story behind NZRIS
NZRIS is a key action of the 2016 Research, Science and Innovation Domain Plan, which came about through the government’s 2015 National Statement of Science Investment (NSSI).
Research, Science and Innovation Domain Plan [PDF, 1.2 MB]
The NSSI set out a ten-year strategic direction for New Zealand’s science system. It identified that improvements in data collection and management will lead to more evidence-based policies, improve transparency and visibility of the science system, and reduce transaction costs for researchers through the reuse of data and application of common standards.
The Research, Science and Innovation Domain Plan (the Domain Plan) set out the broad vision and direction for science and innovation data in New Zealand. It identified a need for better information about research and development funding, expenditure and outputs, so that as a country we would be able to answer enduring questions about how to best design and implement RS&I activity to achieve social, economic, health and environmental objectives.
The Domain Plan set out a number of actions, the first being for MBIE to work with the RS&I sector to establish a “system-wide data information system for research in New Zealand – ie, a national research information system with the ability to link data on researchers, their projects, outputs, funding sources and end user collaboration”.
In the past 2 years, MBIE has worked closely with the sector to start defining a common set of definitions of concepts and data elements to create a conceptual model for NZRIS. We released the draft conceptual model for public consultation in March 2017 and submissions closed in mid-April. A Māori consultation round was also undertaken. We worked with the sector to improve this model and ultimately released the NRIS Conceptual Framework in December 2017.
You can find previous material here.
Learning from similar systems overseas
National research information systems have been implemented in countries such as Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Portugal and the United States. Finland and the UK are also developing national systems. The Research Council's UK Gateway to Research has information about funded research and, while not a full national system, gives an idea of the type of information we intend to hold in NZRIS. We have had discussions with a number of countries about their systems and are using this knowledge to develop NZRIS.