IAR exists because the New Zealand public sector needed a better answer to a simple, hard question: what information do we hold, and who is responsible for it? We've spent the last two years building that answer with the people who live the problem.
The Information Asset Register (IAR) is the product. It's what you'd licence, log into, and run. IAR is the solution to a number of problems, including:
A complete register of every information asset: who owns it, how long it must be kept, and its current stewardship status. The same register natively supports your IMMA assessment and targets.
Every steward sees all the assets they're accountable for, can update classifications, set improvement actions, and track their progress, all without sharing spreadsheets.
For oversight bodies and regulators, IAR surfaces the full asset picture across the regulated population. This includes IMMA maturity distribution, and where individual strengths can be shared to lift the whole.
Across the sector, holdings sit in scattered spreadsheets, we lack the resources to update our schedules, disposal stalls (sometimes for years), and accountability disappears when people change roles. The maturity assessment comes round annually, at best, and for the rest of the year the picture goes dark.
IAR is our answer: one connected register that agencies can actually run, and a population view that gives regulators the system-level picture no single-agency tool can. We've built it in open discussion with Archives NZ, ALGIM, and the IM community, so it fits how the work is really done.
Elias has spent decades in knowledge and information management. His MA thesis explored the digital representation of knowledge. Since 2015, he has worked across multiple agencies and All-of-Government initiatives on the GCDO's information management programme, contributing to the IM function at agency and sector level. That work culminated in leading information management at the Ministry for the Environment.
When he had to implement an Information Asset Register at MfE, he looked for a tool that could do what spreadsheets could not. Nothing offered a reliable solution, and nothing came close to addressing the sector view. He left MfE in 2025, and promptly set out to build IAR.
Whether you're an agency, a regulator, or both, the best next step is a conversation about your needs.