Landcare Research has just signed a contract with NIWA for their involvement in the NZ Organisms Register project. NIWA has worked closely with Landcare Research on the initial vision for NZOR, the scoping study, and other aspects of the project to date and this formalises that relationship.

Under this contract NIWA will provide a number of services to support the project in year 1, including:

1. Providing Species2000 New Zealand data to NZOR and liasing with Species2000 NZ authors
2. Deploying a nomenclatural and taxonomic editing tool to aggregate NIWA's organism names data
3. Collaborating with Landcare Research staff to deploy an NZOR data harvester at NIWA
4. Collaborating with Landcare Research on a Gap Analysis to determine the taxonomic coverage and synonymy missing from the initial NZOR cache
5. Participating in the design, implementation development and review of NZOR data structures, module architecture and service interfaces

A number of NIWA staff have supported the vision for NZOR since its inception, and NIWA is a key partner in the NZOR project. In addition to the above participation, NIWA is represented on the NZOR Steering and Advisory Groups.