Voting at next month's general election may change the shape of the government but long-term changes to its role are coming from another direction - the digital revolution.
Just as the digital age is transforming the way we live, work and socialise, it is poised to significantly alter the traditional role of governments throughout the world as well, effectively putting more power in the hands of the people.
Justin Gray, country managing director for Accenture New Zealand, says gone are the days when governments were "always in control" in dealing with citizens and business, preferring a collaborative approach instead.
Now governments will increasingly use digital platforms - in much the same way organisations like Uber, eBay, Spotify and Amazon use them to broker relationships between people, services and goods - to work together with these groups even more closely.
Gray says the aim is to develop "seamless and frictionless" public services making it easier to deal with governments. This will help reduce bureaucratic red tape but will also open the door to greater economic innovation and potentially divert resources to face-to-face services in areas like health and education.
"Governments will become orchestrators," he says. "They will connect businesses, citizens and civil society in more direct and flexible ways; they will become leaner, more innovative and efficient and will be able to respond more quickly to changing patterns of demand from the communities they serve.
"Instead of dealing with five government departments for example, maybe I can have one clean digital experience which provides me with all the basic levels of information I need, freeing up time to focus on other things."
Gray says a government platform may also help deliver "great outcomes" for businesses by reducing compliance costs, barriers to trade and other things good for the economy.
"This process will be about collaboration and trust rather than governments having control," Gray says. "It changes the government-citizen paradigm but it can't be rushed; if it can be explained and understood by the public, these changes will be accepted."
Gray says citizens have similar expectations from their dealings with the government as they do from those with the private sector and other non-government organisations.
"Our expectations of the government are no different from other providers in our life like an airline or bank - I don't want to have to interact with them unless I really have to, otherwise I just want it ticking over in the background."
He says government agencies must move beyond compliance mindsets and make bold changes to policy, practice and partnerships - even to the traditional role of governments in a market economy. This may mean governments of the future will deliver fewer services themselves but collaborate more with the private sector and non-profit organisations.
"Platforms are connective tissue meaning organisations don't need to live within the boundaries of the past," he says. "Traditional boundaries are changing in the private sector - airlines selling insurance for example.
"Likewise public services do not always have to be produced by government agencies; in the digital era, the private sector, non-government organisations, citizens and even machines can produce these services often faster and with better user experiences than the government itself."
Gray says a good example of this is an e-file programme providing free online tax assistance and e-file options through the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the United States. Rather than taking the time and resources to develop these apps itself, the IRS has approved apps developed by private companies while making access available through irs.gov.
In Britain a government platform - gov.uk - hosts more than 300 government websites allowing it to not only share more data, but eliminate costly duplication.
Gray says it is important however for governments to recognise they are not totally unconstrained as they are often the last safety net protecting the welfare of citizens.
New Zealand has an opportunity to be a world leader: "The right thinking is here and in some respects we are already leading by being part of the D5 (a five-nation group of New Zealand, Estonia, Israel, the United Kingdom and South Korea, founded in 2014 to work towards a strong digital economy). We can take advantage of our position of strength and push even further into delivering citizen services."
His views are in line with international thinking on the issue: Mark Thompson, an international information systems expert based at the University of Cambridge in Britain has, for example, likened it to a shift from "blockbuster" government to "Youtube government" with governments of the future providing open platforms for citizens and business to create and share.
"We're talking about social transformation," he says. "While it won't happen tomorrow, it will happen."