NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE, No. 70

4 JUNE 2013

Programming Costs

In some circumstances, programming will be necessary for the core data to be extracted and provided to the Applicant. These programming costs are additional to LIC’s normal business. They are charged at LIC’s standard internal hourly charge rate for programming or at actual cost if LIC decides to have this work outsourced. Where the user requests subsequent changes to the program, that cost is also charged on this basis at the time of the request.

In some circumstances, LIC will incorporate or use its own proprietary software to undertake the provision of data more efficiently. When this circumstance occurs, LIC will allocate a share of the development costs for this proprietary software to the amount charged, but the total programming charge will not be greater than the cost that would have been incurred if LIC had undertaken the programming without incorporating or otherwise using the proprietary software.

Program Maintenance

An annual maintenance charge is made to keep the program in operation each year. This charge covers program updates to conform to changes in LIC’s systems. This charge is in proportion to the size of the program development.

Costs of Collecting, Verifying, Correcting, Storing and Extracting Core Data

The costs of collecting, verifying, correcting, storing and extracting core data are accumulated from three of LIC’s divisions: Genetics, Computer Services and Information. The bulk of these costs are borne internally by LIC, with the balance of the core database costs (around one-third of the costs) being charged to LIC’s MINDA division and third parties in the manner described below.

Some of the costs (core database infrastructure costs) are fixed because they are incurred regardless of the number of animals recorded on the database. Other costs will vary with the number of animals whose records are held in the database. The charges for providing extracts of core data accordingly have fixed and variable components. Some applications for core data require only the records which are to be extracted to be held (i.e. they are not dependent on other data held in the database). Other applications require a larger part of the database to be available and the records in it evaluated in order to select those records to be extracted. In the former case, Applicants will be charged a variable charge per record extracted. In the latter case, the Applicants will be charged both the variable charge per record extracted and a fixed charge that relates to the fixed costs of establishing and maintaining the database.

Accordingly, three charges are made for this aspect of the provision of the core data:

(a) A fixed annual charge will apply to all parties which request core data, except those where the "primary key" (i.e. activating field) in selecting the data to be extracted is a "key field" as defined in the Regulations and its range is specified in the application (i.e. the records relate to specific herds or farms).

(b) A charge for producing the first output in each season, which covers the costs of collecting, validating, processing, storing and extracting the core data each season. The basis for charging is the number of output records resulting from the request. The charge is made for each season that the data is supplied for. For the purposes of this document, a season is defined as the 12 months from 1 June to 31 May.