Dear Ministry for Culture and Heritage,

My OIA request has six points.

In February 2018 I requested information from the Ministry for Culture and Heritage as to how and why the TVNZ Archive collection had shrunk considerably from 647,000 items (MCH figure in 2013) to 435,000 items (NTSV figure in 2017) - a variance of 212,000 items. The Ministry replied that Nga Taonga was currently undertaking an audit of the collection (due August 2018) and that it would share its methodology with the Ministry.

1. Given that the audit is now complete can you please provide the total number of ITEMS found in the TVNZ Archive collection, along with the methodology by which Nga Taonga came to this total.

In November 2017 the Ministry for Culture and Heritage told RNZ news that since 2014 Nga Taonga had digitized 6,653 items from the TVNZ Archive collection. I asked the Ministry how many titles were actually online and you responded "Nil. In order to make digitally preserved titles available online, Nga Taonga requires an Online Catalogue entry to 'attach' the digital file to, and to enable website visitors to search for and discover the material".

2. Given that the TVNZ catalogue is now online can you please supply all official information that documents when and how the 6,653 items will be viewable online (0 titles are currently viewable).

The new Memorandum of Understanding between the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage and Nga Taonga sets a digitization target of 1,500 TVNZ Archive titles. This is a reduced target from previous years.

3. Please supply all official information about how the 1,500 digitization target was reached.

4. Please supply the report that Nga Taonga was meant to supply to the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage before 30 June 2018 which documents the TVNZ Archive project.

5. Please supply the Quarterly Reports that you received from Nga Taonga for Oct-Nov-Dec2017 and Jan-Feb-Mar2018.

6. Please supply the Monthly Reports that your received from Nga Taonga for the period 1 November 2017 to 31 July 2018.

Yours faithfully,

Joss J.

Hello Louise,

Thank you for your reply. Can I just ask for clarification on your response.

The MoU between the Minister and Nga Taonga (2014-19) requires monthly reports to be submitted by the archive to MCH (noted in the MoU Schedule 2/B). I know monthly reports were submitted to MCH 2014-2017. Can you confirm the date that the Ministry stopped receiving monthly reports from Nga Taonga? And was this because the Ministry stop requesting them?

You say in your response that Nga Taonga's annual preservation target of 1,500 items from the TVNZ collection was "arrived at through negotiations" between the Ministry and Nga Taonga - and yet you have supplied no official information regarding these negotiations. Can you confirm that the Ministry holds no official information relating to these negotiations (e.g. briefings, emails, meeting notes, diary entries, verbal communications etc)? And if there is no official information, can I ask how the negotiations were undertaken?

Yours sincerely,

Joss J.