Rugby is the key to developing online industry

Digital Strategy Director Peter Macaulay. Picture / Mark Mitchell

As programme manager for the Government's Digital Strategy, Peter Macaulay is charged with driving an ambitious Beehive initiative to drag New Zealand, technologically, into the 21st century.

Not least among the strategy's lofty aims is the goal of moving the country's broadband uptake rate from near the bottom of the OECD into the top quarter of nations by 2010.

Macaulay, the former executive director of InternetNZ, is undaunted by that and other goals in the strategy, which is backed by $400 million of planned Government spending.

"Yes there are [ambitious targets set under the strategy] and that's what makes it exciting," he says.

"It's unusual in that for a Government document of that sort it sets out very clear targets. It also sets out very clear directions for how relationships are to be developed and also puts aside money for it.

"From a business perspective, that's the kind of thing I expect to see in a business plan and I would fully expect if, in a commercial situation, a board delivered me a strategy of that sort I would have absolutely no excuses not to deliver."

And while Macaulay's 18-month contract managing the strategy runs out early next year, he says he is confident that goals such as the broadband target will ultimately be achieved.

"I don't think that's unrealistic. We're a small country - we've now got an open market place. What we have to do is ensure our businesses deliver the drivers, for example getting video on demand out there."

He believes broadcast sport is the lure to get New Zealanders connected to fast broadband at a sprint.

"If we deliver rugby over broadband with the ability to delay broadcast and to have it immediately and all the other things you can do with the technology, the uptake will be very rapid. And hey, guess what? No rain fade."

A one-time aircraft engineer, successful business founder and international information technology consultant, Macaulay admits he hesitated before taking on his present job because the concept of working within the bureaucratic constraints of Government set off alarm bells.

But respect for Communications Minister David Cunliffe and key staff in the Ministry of Economic Development pushed him to cross over.

Macaulay began his career as an Air New Zealand aircraft engineer in the late 1960s before moving over to the airline's computer services division as an analyst programmer.

He later worked for Eagle Technology and in 1983, with Trevor Eagle, set up The Number One Software Company, selling out in the late 1990s.

His son Matthew was one of two New Zealanders killed in London's 1999 Paddington train disaster, prompting him and wife Diana to move to Britain, where they worked with victims' lobby groups "to confront some of the issues" around the tragedy that cost 31 lives.

He worked as a consultant while in Britain, returning to New Zealand in 2002.

"I'm a great believer in setting times for doing stuff and then moving on afterward. Over 80 per cent of chief executives outwear their welcome.

"The reality is if you're good at what you do, unless it's a family business you should be looking at moving on to a new challenge before you get stale. For me, that is typically around the two-year mark."

Macaulay says boosting business productivity is one of the Digital Strategy's "flagship" initiatives and an area of personal interest for him.

In the business setting, he believes, the secret to achieving high broadband uptake lies in educating small businesses, the lifeblood of the economy, about the benefits of the technology.

"What we need is for New Zealand business to learn to trade [online].

"The interesting thing is they're all doing it on Trade Me. There's no reason why a small plumbing business can't be doing its ordering and its transactions with customers and shifting drawings and information online," he says.

"If we get all those guys singing the same song and using good tools and doing innovative stuff then we'll see small ICT suppliers developing exciting new products for them, so the whole thing's a virtuous circle."

PETER MACAULAY

Who: Programme manager for the Government's Digital Strategy.

Favourite gadget: Palm Treo.

Next big thing: Ubiquity. "The next big thing will be technology turning into the next small thing. It will just be there."

Alternative career: Something back in aviation - his first career.

Spare time: Kayaking, surfing, windsurfing, fishing, church, motorcycling. "I'm a petrol head. Any opportunity or excuse to get on my motorbike, I'll take it."

Favourite sci-fi movie: The director's cut of Blade Runner.