A chief technology officer for the country could identify big issues and own a national strategy, writes
Barack Obama has one. So do many large companies. The chief technology officer’s role, for the US at least, is to apply technology to help create jobs, reduce the cost of health care, help keep the nation secure and increase access to broadband.
Picture / Alan Gibson The
focus during the past three years has been on implementing the
ultrafast broadband network — a key part of improving the internet.
New Zealand is the farthest country from its trading partners in the
world. As a small, sub-scale, island nation we have the most of any
country to gain by technology.
Our Government has done a great job with fiscal management and has achieved some useful incremental tweaks, but we haven’t as a country played a bold move with technology. We lack a technology plan.
In the last term, we went through the traumatic restructure of our telecommunications industry, and during the past three years the focus has been the implementation of the domestic ultrafast broadband network — a key part of improving the internet.
Over this timeframe, technology has seen entire industries disrupted,
and new organisations like Xero, Vend and others become world-leading
cloud companies, all from our small set of rocks in the South Pacific.
But as a country, we’ve been far too passive about using technology to
redefine our place in the world.
We have a natural advantage that we haven’t exploited. In business, small empowered teams are how you get things done. A small country of only four million people should be best placed to change the game.
One issue is that even capable politicians are not in the internet generation. Insulated from technology by their press secretaries, many see the internet primarily through secure email on their BlackBerries.
They don’t live the internet everyday as a communication tool like most knowledge workers, service industries and many, if not all, young people.
Ideologically, parties to the right have a bias to let market forces sort things out. But experience has shown that infrastructure monopolies form in small sub-scale markets.
The Southern Cross cable monopoly has shown its adeptness at keeping competition out of the market, paying hundreds of millions in dividends while business calls from New Zealand on Skype stutter along.
The traditional engagement model between the public and private sectors only really allows technology businesses to work reactively on government initiatives.
We have a natural advantage that we haven’t exploited. In business, small empowered teams are how you get things done. A small country of only four million people should be best placed to change the game.
One issue is that even capable politicians are not in the internet generation. Insulated from technology by their press secretaries, many see the internet primarily through secure email on their BlackBerries.
They don’t live the internet everyday as a communication tool like most knowledge workers, service industries and many, if not all, young people.
Ideologically, parties to the right have a bias to let market forces sort things out. But experience has shown that infrastructure monopolies form in small sub-scale markets.
The Southern Cross cable monopoly has shown its adeptness at keeping competition out of the market, paying hundreds of millions in dividends while business calls from New Zealand on Skype stutter along.
The traditional engagement model between the public and private sectors only really allows technology businesses to work reactively on government initiatives.
