New Zealand Research Information System

What is NZRIS

The NZRIS database will provide data about funded research in New Zealand.  Access to the database will be open to everyone; students, members of the public, media, government, businesses, and of course, the research community itself.

Over time, NZRIS will provide:

• a more comprehensive picture of what research is being undertaken
• greater visibility of New Zealand’s science, innovation, and technology sectors
• improvements in the collection and re-use of data across the sector
• a single-source of data about the system that can inform policy and investment decisions
• information about opportunities and gaps in the system that can be leveraged to develop new products and services

NZRIS will help to create common data standards, reduce the reporting burden, simplify administration, and enable the re-use of data.

How NZRIS will work

NZRIS is a technology solution that will allow data to be held in one place and be presented in a way that is user-friendly and manageable.

As NZRIS matures, it is expected to contain 2 main types of data: data about funding and other resources that enable research to happen; and data about the research activity itself. Data about funding and other resources will generally include the name of the research fund or other resource, its purpose, how it is being distributed, and who it is distributed to. Data about research activity will generally include the name of the project and outputs. Both types of data will include the names of organisations and individuals involved in the research.

The data will be provided by organisations that fund research and organisations that undertake research, referred to as “NZRIS data providers”. Examples of data providers include the Health Research Council, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Royal Society Te Apārangi, as well as organisations that undertake research.

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. UK Research and Innovation’s 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.

The case for NZRIS

The New Zealand Government invests around $1.8b a year in research activities which are undertaken by many different organisations and institutions.

Answering basic questions like “how much is invested in a particular area of research?” can be surprisingly difficult, let alone answering more in-depth questions about the value of these investments or where there might be gaps.

The 2016 Research, Science and Innovation Domain Plan (the Domain Plan) proposed solving this problem by creating a national research information system as a single online hub of consistent, standardised, and accurate information about the sector.

The Domain Plan set a 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 Research, Science and Innovation 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 Research, Science and Innovation 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, we have 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. A Māori consultation round was also undertaken. Following consultation, we worked with the sector to improve this model and ultimately released the NRIS Conceptual Framework in December 2017.

Sector collaboration

The development, implementation, and operation of NZRIS by MBIE’s NZRIS programme team is underpinned by a commitment to collaborate with the Research, Science and Innovation sector.

We are working in partnership with the sector, including the Māori research community, to build NZRIS in a way that benefits all participants and users. To enable this to happen, we have a framework in place that ensures the sector is actively involved in guiding, directing, feeding into, and helping design the new system. This includes the NZRIS Stewardship and Oversight Group, the NZRIS Technical Advisory Group and the NZRIS Indigenous Data Sovereignty Working Group.

Key documents

The Public sector financial resource code sets spreadsheet contains information from Treasury on code-sets used for appropriations.

Public sector financial resource code sets(external link) – github.com

You can download machine-readable versions of all available code-sets from the NZRIS codesets Github page. Each code set is available in Excel (xlsx) format, Comma Separated Values (CSV) format, Tab Separated Values (TSV) format, and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). To download all code sets in all formats from this page, select the green “Clone or download” button and then select “Download ZIP”.

NZRIS codesets Github page(external link) – github.com

See also our NZRIS newsletters

NZRIS newsletters

More information

Any organisation wanting to find out more about NZRIS can get in touch by emailing nzris@mbie.govt.nz