Logjam of IT support groups

By RICHARD WOOD

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has concluded there are too many support groups in the IT industry and at least one has not had its funding renewed.

The Software Association had 50/50 funding for a communications officer until the end of June.

Incoming association president Wayne Hudson said the Government development agency had indicated that consolidation was needed.

The association was not about to merge with another group but was talking about working more closely and sharing resources with others, and would expand its committee nationally.

The agency's early research into the industry indicated there were at least 46 significant groups and up to 300 with an interest in the area.

The main group includes the Information Technology Association, , the Software Association, the Electronic Exports Association, Canterbury Electronics Group, Wireless Data Forum, Computer Society, Telecommunications Users Association, Next Generation Internet Consortium, Internet Society, and various regional and industry clusters and incubators.

The agency's ICT (information and communications technology) sector director, Paul Claridge, said it was up to the industry itself to find a solution to this dissipated effort and decide how many organisations were needed.

The agency's role was to facilitate the debate.

Many of the groups were voluntary and wanted to retain their identities, but were willing to share their back-end resources.

Claridge said the agency did not provide a lot of funding for industry groups, but the Government intended spending money to help to implement ICT Taskforce recommendations.

A final call on that funding is expected from Cabinet in December and is likely to involve the newest industry group, the Hi Growth Project.

The trust running it is headed by taskforce member Catherine Calarco as executive director and is being put together to implement the findings of the ICT Taskforce report.

This report proposed a goal of building 100 new $100 million ICT companies within 10 years.

An initial Hi Growth project will be to build a web portal using IT sector profile data that Trade and Enterprise is now collecting.

Hi-Growth programme manager John Fergusson said it was early days for both that project and Hi Growth.

"The ICT Taskforce report defines what's needed, but we've got to work out exactly what's required."

Fergusson said Hi Growth could move faster than government organisations, and it was receiving incredible support from the IT industry.

The initiative's role was not to be a sledgehammer in the ICT industry group scene, but to "mould it into a cohesive offering to the world outside".