KEY POINTS:
After years of letting the IT and communications industry tackle the big barriers to creating a knowledge economy in this country - lack of decent broadband and an IT skills shortage among them - the Government has stepped in to create a "digital super group" to address such issues.
The forum, which will be publicly funded to the tune of $1.65 million over the next two years and $400,000 a year thereafter, will have an arm's-length relationship with the Government.
Its goal, according to Communications and IT Minister David Cunliffe, will be to create partnerships between "industry, community and voluntary groups and users and provide a co-ordinated voice to Government on digital issues".
It will come complete with national council, executive board and working groups and key to its success, says Cunliffe, will be its "wide representation".
Buried in this week's announcement of the super group, the Government revealed it is also working on helping to establish a separate, privately funded ICT industry body which will deal with things that are crucial to growing the ICT sector - improving export prospects for local IT companies, promoting innovation, creating new high-skilled jobs and IT graduates and encouraging investment to expand the sector. In other words, being an advocate for local companies trying to help to build a knowledge economy.
Industry executives will meet this month to look at how the body should be made up. Its actual formation, therefore, is still some time away.
"This is an industry-led body and its success is dependent on [the industry's] ability to implement the body," is the Government's seemingly non-committal view on the ICT group.
It should, however, be a top priority. Efforts to mobilise the IT industry through groups like ICT-NZ, which shut its doors this week, and the HiGrowth Project, which has been wound down in favour of the new digital super group, have largely been ineffective.
The Government and the ICT industry need to show some leadership in getting a new body up and running and setting the agenda as soon as possible. It is just as important, if not more so, than the overarching aims of the Government's new super group.
The ICT industry will benefit from that group's work on projects in the "national interest".
But how, I wonder, can this group be effective when it has to deal with the possibly contradictory views of such a diverse range of parties?
Broadband users want different things from software start-ups. Community groups have opposing views to those of research institutes. This grand plan to get some coherent consensus on "digital issues" sounds all-inclusive on paper but in practice runs the risk of being hamstrung by its overextended remit.
When it comes to the issues facing consumers of technology, New Zealanders are already pretty well represented. The Telecommunications Users Association is a pitbull in advocating everything from cheaper phone calls to better broadband. The Government is wary of TUANZ because the body's focus is so clear - it wants a better deal for the consumer.
The non-profit organisation InternetNZ likewise benefits from its singular vision for the internet - "high performance and unfettered access for all".
Both these groups produce well-argued submissions to the Government on a regular basis and while they will be invited to contribute to the super group, the structure of the new body threatens to dilute the efforts of these hardworking watchdogs.
InternetNZ president Keith Davidson's lukewarm endorsement of the new group says it all: "We will watch with interest to see what real benefits to the industry can accrue through this initiative."
The Government has also consulted far and wide in creating its original Digital Strategy document and did so again when it last year revamped that strategy, incorporating feedback into a new Digital Strategy 2.0 draft document expected to be released next month and finalised by the middle of the year. In 2005 it set up the Digital Strategy Advisory Group which consisted of a diverse range of people to help steer the strategy. The advisory group has similarly been wound down with the formation of the new group. In 2005, the strategy, in the words of Cunliffe, was "about people and their ability to connect to the things that matter to them. It's about lifting productivity across the whole economy, especially among small and medium-size enterprises, and thereby helping to grow the ICT sector."
The Government has fairly well embraced the first bit of that statement with its belated advocacy on broadband. It's that last bit, "helping to grow the ICT sector", that continues to be overlooked. Maybe that's because it is the hardest part of the equation. But taking steps to build up our export-dollar-earning ICT industry goes hand in hand with the other aims of the digital strategy.
I think we'll find that approach is in the national interest as well.
