Adam Gifford: Excuse the babelware, but we are in ICT after all

How many voluntary organisations are needed to represent the New Zealand information and communications sector?

Actually, make that sectors, because these guys aren't quite like those guys and they're looking after the big guys and that's where the little guys go and what's in it for me?

In fact, since I've started my own software company, I'll start my own lobby group as well.

Maybe I'll call it a working group or a task force, and pretend it is of fixed duration. Or a cluster, with all that implies.

Yes, what New Zealanders like more than joining organisations is starting their own organisation.

In the ICT sector, there has been talk for four years or more of trimming the number of sector support organisations.

Software Association president Wayne Hudson has seen an estimate that there are 148 such groups - just don't ask him to name them.

"What we don't want to do is become group number 149," he says.

Actually there is a group 149, Ictus, or the ICT Unified Submissions Secretariat.

It's the brainchild of the indefatigable Jim Higgins, one of the founders of the New Zealand Internet Society, with seed funding from InternetNZ.

Its website says it has no membership because it exists only to collate and unify submissions to Government.

Higgins says if it were a membership organisation, questions might be asked about how it would deal with submissions from non-members.

"We want to get as many organisations and people into the fold as we can," Higgins says.

The idea is to present a single face to the Government. There is a clear perception in the Government that the IT industry is fragmented and incapable of getting its act together.

While the Ictus business model is still to prove itself, its creation reflects a sense the sector is losing some of its momentum.

The Hi-Growth Project, set up out of the Government's ICT Taskforce, set an initial target of 100 $100 million technology companies within 10 years.

Hudson, who was recently appointed to the Hi-Growth board, says that was sound bite more than substance, and Hi-Growth's thinking now is more around the objective of boosting the technology sector to 10 per cent of gross domestic product within the decade.

It is now between 4 and 5 per cent, and at current growth rates may get up to about 6 per cent.

More co-ordination in the sector is seen as essential to get sustainable growth, given the limited resources available.

There is a lot of duplication among groups who may see their membership bases as being more specialised than they are.

There are historical factors. The Software Association grew out of an exporter group, and traditionally represents small companies trying to sell software overseas.

Its members need things like networking, some business and market advice, a bit of professional development, sometimes a lobbying voice on issues like tax treatment.

The IT Association of New Zealand was where the big multinational firms gathered, although in more recent years second-tier local services firms have also tried to use it as a platform for initiatives like the Outsource2NewZealand plan.

The New Zealand Computer Society has been around longest and has the biggest administrative infrastructure. Its focus is professional development and certification, building up standards of professionalism in the IT sector.

Then there is the Health Cluster, the Wireless Data Forum, Women in IT, serious techie organisations like UniForum and the Network Operators Groups, Government geek group Govis, organisations which try to help companies establish beachheads in foreign markets.

We know Kiwis can do. What we want to know is can they collaborate?

Perhaps the nature of the IT sector is that every new technology sector needs a new interest group to define and look after the interests of participants.

But maybe some of these mini-empires would be better off as sub-committees of a larger organisation with shared administrative services?

Hi-Growth chairman Paul Hargreaves, a Datacom director, says the Government is trying to form relationships with the industry, but the environment is confusing.

Because all the Hi-Growth members have come from the industry, they are in a good position to push things along.

"It is important for a country to have an indigenous IT industry," Hargreaves said.

"There are so many spin-offs. Just looking at Datacom, I can see the multiplier effect.

"Today it is a company of 1700 people, but there are also all the businesses it has spun off.

"Up and down the country I see people who have left us and gone out on their own."

The Government identified technology early on as an industry which was not only of importance to the economy but which was full of feel-good photo opportunities. Often the latter factor seems the more important one in its calculations.

The industry needs to find ways to present a more unified face, not only to present to Government but to present to the world.

If a Government-funded organisation like Hi-Growth can make progress there, good luck to it.