Minister reviews NZ's digital progress

By RICHARD PAMATATAU


The Labour Government is initiating a "digital strategy review" to examine its ability to uncover inefficiency and promote successes.

David Cunliffe, the Associate Minister for Communications, IT Finance and Revenue, said the review would cover what the Government was doing to make New Zealand a better place to live through the wider adoption of information and communications technology.

He said the review would benchmark New Zealand against "the learnings" from his recent visits to Geneva, where he attended the inaugural World Summit on the Information Society, and Korea, where he looked at that Government's push into broadband and related technologies.

The summit issued a document aimed at helping build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented information society.

Cunliffe said the conference gave him benchmarks on the future of IT, access, content and connectivity.

It was important for the Government to know where things were at, especially if the use of IT was to be effective in lifting the living standards of all Kiwis and the closing of the digital divide.

The completion date of the review has not yet been announced.

English and Chinese were the dominant languages on the web, he said, and that had big implications for smaller societies.

The summit made it clear that the web must be used for preserving culture by digitising a lot of material under the notion of 'digital heritage'.

It was really important for people to be able to record their stories on line, said Cunliffe.

The conference gave out awards to promote social and cultural issues and two New Zealand initiatives - the operating theatre bus that travels to less-populated areas offering surgery and Living Heritage's web environment for recording personal stories - scored a prize and high commendation respectively.

Cunliffe said the operating theatre was getting high-tech medical services to remote communities and the Living Heritage system allowed people, particularly Maori, to have their whanau and history documented.

New Zealand had to embrace the digital world and not become a nation making just high-tech products. Broadband access and good IT meant business was better able to support its goals with high-tech facilities.

If a company had better stock control and could manage its relationships with customers better, the chances were it would be more successful, he said.

But New Zealanders were very complacent and needed more passion, said Cunliffe.

"Life in New Zealand is very easy compared to many countries overseas and if we don't get a sense of urgency we will be left behind.

"Kiwis have to be better skilled and see IT not as the answer but as the tool," he said.

Government departments might be encouraged to buy local software, but only where it was as good as or better than something that was available globally.

Cunliffe said his visit to Korea showed him how broadband access could benefit an economy.

New Zealand was not like Korea, where the population was housed more densely, so getting access to all was a different matter.

He said the Probe work was a start and there were other things the Government needed to consider on its broadband journey.