The Waikato Data Portal is a public platform that the Waikato Councils have established to share our data. We believe that knowledge is power and that by working together to make our data free and open it will promote progress, unlock innovation, and by its creative use, result in economic value for our region. Growing Open Data that is useful and benefits the community over time will be a collaborative process and we encourage users to engage with us and provide feedback to help shape the data that available to you. The work within the Waikato aligns to the Open Government Data Programme which is a cross government programme, making government data available for reuse. There is a wealth of background information about open data and the programme available from the data.govt.nz/open-data website. Later this year we anticipate that the data from our portal will also be available from data.govt.nz alongside other national government datasets. Our site will continue to operate and be available as the first port of call for local government data and contacts in the Waikato.