The categories in the Business Reference Taxonomy provide the basis for developing specific business reference architectures and patterns, and defining business capability.

These reference architectures and patterns can be more readily used across government where the terms from the reference taxonomy are used consistently.

Purpose of the taxonomy

The Business Reference Taxonomy is used to:

• identify duplication of function within and across agencies, and corresponding opportunities for cost reduction
• identify opportunities for collaboration, shared services, and solution reuse in agency IT portfolios
• identify gaps in function within and across agencies, and corresponding opportunities for investment to improve customer-centric service delivery, and related sector, cluster and agency support functions
• map sector, cluster and agency services
• define government business capabilities.

Understand the taxonomy structure

The reference taxonomies are categorised into different levels. The Business Reference Taxonomy has up to 3 levels. Domains are the top level, areas are the second level, and categories are the third level.

Each taxonomy category has a unique ID, for example B1.

The Business Reference Taxonomy has 6 domains:

• B1 — New Zealand Society
• B2 — Individuals and Communities
• B3 — Businesses
• B4 — Civic Infrastructure
• B5 — Enterprise
• B6 — Government.

New Zealand Society

The New Zealand Society business domain has functions that serve all of New Zealand as a country.

Individuals and Communities

The Individuals and Communities domain has functions that deliver services specifically to New Zealand individuals and communities.

Businesses

The Businesses domain has areas that deliver services specifically to New Zealand businesses.

Civic Infrastructure

The Civic Infrastructures domain has areas that delivers New Zealand infrastructure.

Enterprise

These are the enterprise functions or corporate functions that are common to all organisations. These functions are performed by business organisations, government organisations and other types of organisations.

Government

The Government domain includes:

• the changing set of organisations within government, their functions and governance arrangements, and how they work together to deliver results for Ministers and the public
• executing legislative processes in Houses of Parliament, assemblies or councils, where officers are elected to represent citizens
• administering committees that report to legislative bodies
• managing elections of government representatives and sponsoring major community events
• official duties carried out by the titular head of the government or municipality
• managing the machinery of government processes at all levels of government.

Download the taxonomies

The taxonomies are available on data.govt.nz. You can download or access the Business Reference Taxonomy or all of the reference taxonomies together.

• GEA-NZ Reference taxonomies modelling files — data.govt.nz 
  Data sets of all the reference taxonomies or each individual taxonomy, in XML format, exported using XMI 2.5.1.
• GEA-NZ All reference taxonomies — data.govt.nz
  Data sets of all reference taxonomies, in both XLSX and CSV formats which can be either downloaded or accessed via the data.govt.nz API.