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• New Zealand Government Web Standards 1.0

Terms of use

Standard

Agencies must provide terms of use on interactive websites and on websites that require authenticated access, as outlined below.  Agencies are encouraged to consult their legal teams when developing such terms of use.

Placement of terms of use

Terms of use must be available on, or linked to from, both of the following:

• the About this site page, and
• the point of registration (if applicable).

1. Interactive websites

An interactive website is one which enables users to contribute content which may be published on the website. Examples of interactive websites are blogs, wikis, online fora, social networking sites, photo-sharing sites and video-sharing sites. 

Depending on the nature of an agency’s site, terms of use may need to deal with some or all of the following:

• registration and credential obligations if there is be registration and authentication of users (see further below);
• warranties on the part of site users contributing third party copyright content that they have the right to use such material;
• indemnities in favour of the agency to protect it against loss if such warranties are breached (note, however, that thought should be given to whether inclusion of such an indemnity is appropriate by reference to the likely audience of the website and the potentially adverse message it could send to users of government services);
• ownership or licensing of users’ contributions; 
• unacceptable use and the agency’s right to remove offending material; 
• moderation of user-generated content;
• how the agency deals with instances of repeat copyright infringement by users;
• banning of abusive commenters; 
• co-operation with authorities in the event that material breaching other parties’ rights, or that is otherwise unlawful, is posted to the site;
• to the extent that State Services staff may contribute content to the site, a reminder of, or a term requiring compliance with, the Standards of Integrity and Conduct for the State Services;
• if the website will allow users to sign up to email notifications and if such notifications may include commercial messages (which may or may not appear on the site itself), a term dealing with such a prospect (drawn to users’ attention at the time of their subscribing for email
• the right to amend the terms of use.

While terms governing the copyright and licensing of the agency’s own content may also appear in a website’s terms of use, those terms are discussed under the Copyright and Copyright of third parties standards.

Similarly, while terms disclaiming liability for content on the site and/or for links to third party sites may appear in the terms of use, they are discussed under the Disclaiming content standard.

Example

• Terms of use for the State Services Commission's In Development blog

2. Websites requiring authenticated access

The terms of use for an agency website that requires authenticated access must contain terms dealing with the following:

• protection of the customer’s computing environment;
• any lifecycle requirements for the authentication key (password, token, etc);
• user responsibilities;
• processes and procedures relating to compromise or suspected compromise of the authentication key; and
• the agency's responsibilities to its online service customers.

More information 

• Note that authentication itself doesn't fall under the web standards. See Identity Management and Authentication Standards at the GTS website.