Study of the use of metadata on New Zealand government agencies' websites

Abstract

Currently, metadata is an important technique to organize physical and electronic resources. The basic premise of metadata is to use data to describe and represent the characteristics of information. It serves to improve information accessibility. In New Zealand, the New Zealand government has set up a national metadata standard named New Zealand Government Locate Service (NZGLS), based on the Dublin Core (DC) metadata standard, to facilitate precise searching for New Zealand government information. This study undertakes a web survey of 264 New Zealand government agencies' websites that are listed on the New Zealand government portal. It investigates current use of metadata on these 264 websites. The aims of this study are to assess the current state of implementation of the Dublin Core and NZGLS standards and to examine the actual use of metadata on New Zealand government agencies' websites. It was found that the 264 websites have a very low compliance rate of the DC and NZGLS standards. An average incidence is less than 30 percent. The survey data has also shown that the metadata on these websites are geared towards the trend of the general websites' metadata application as most of websites use only the popular metadata elements, such as Subject and Keyword. There is a huge gap between the actual use of metadata and the delivery of metadata implementation by NZGLS. The implications and recommendations are discussed in the research.