Co-Creation, A New Strategem For Govt. ICT | 500 Words

Like the video interview above with Internal Affairs Minister Chris Tremain, the story I am going to tell today is necessarily a bit vague.

Last week NZICT and NZ Rise members were invited to a special briefing by the Department of Internal Affairs, introduced by Minister of Internal Affairs Chris Tremain - on a new "Draft" ICT strategy for Government ICT. Note emphasis on the "Draft".

The briefing was announced at relatively short notice and cost $100 to attend - something which GCIO (Government Chief Information Officer) and DIA CE (Internal Affairs Chief Executive) Colin MacDonald credited with encouraging a particularly high level of attendance from industry representatives.

Scoop Media was invited as we have recently joined ICT lobby group NZ Rise . I applied to attend on behalf of Scoop Media as Scoop's General Manager - i.e. not wearing my editorial hat.

Scoop has participated in several Government tenders over the past few years and "have a view as a business" on the subject of Government ICT service procurement.

I was rather delighted when they decided it would be ok for me to attend. I had indicated I would be happy to be bound by any rules around confidentiality - wearing my hat as General Manager. I was therefore rather pleasantly surprised when I was invited to interview the minister afterwards.

The main condition of my attendance was that I not publish or describe the draft ICT strategy in detail - yet. (That said I note a report was published on Stuff on Friday which contains a few of the headline ingredients of the draft strategy..)

The new strategy is due to go to Cabinet for consideration in late April. At this stage the primary sensitivity around its release relates to ensuring that key stakeholders - i.e. Government agency CIOs - get a chance to see it before it is made public.

Within these limitations I can safely tell you that I was fairly impressed with the plan. And it is also ok to talk about the reasons a new plan is needed, and how it has evolved.

There were around 50 or so people present at the briefing representing a very wide cross section of the NZ ICT industry from some of the largest international players (who are represented by NZICT) to some the smallest (i.e. Scoop).

In his introduction the Minister said impetus behind the plan came from five sources:

1) The key driver in policy terms comes via two of the 10 "better public service targets", specifically numbers 9 and 10 "Improving Interaction with Government";
2) The MSD kiosks;
3) Novopay
4) The success of Passports Online which had seen 29% of passports being processed online at a lower costs after just 4 months of operation;
5) A decision in October to widen the mandate of the GCIO Colin MacDonald to "Direct" as well as "understanding" and "recommend" matters related to Government ICT policy.

While I went to the presentation with a fairly high level of scepticism, I was pleasantly surprised by the genuineness of the openness to consultation of the officials.

And I was particularly encouraged by the approach in the strategy towards co-operation, co-opetition and co-creation, not to mention the appearance of the word "agile" in the not-yet public draft strategy.

According to Bennett Medary - Founder and Executive Chairman of Simpl - the tone of the Thursday meeting was something of a departure from the norm. In particular the clear acknowledgment that there are problems with the way things are being done at present, and that finding the answers to this needs will need to be a collaborative business/governmental process was new.

- Alastair Thompson 500 Words Monday, 11 March 2013

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