Hon Peter Dunne
Minister of Internal Affairs

2 February 2016

Speech to the Digital Leaders Annual Lecture
Houses of Parliament, Westminster, London
6.00pm, Tuesday 2nd February 2016:
New Zealand’s Digital Journey

Good evening.

Thank you for the invitation and opportunity to share some thoughts about New Zealand’s experience in transforming the way we provide government services to our citizens in the digital age.

New Zealand’s digital journey is a story about better public services.

It is about how our government is reshaping our relationships and interactions with our citizens to meet their changing expectations.
The word “journey” implies a known destination.

And while no one can predict where the current technological, social and global changes will take us in 50 years, we do know where we need to be in the next five years to meet our citizens’ expectations.

Citizens want services that are easy to access, convenient and tailored to them – and they want them tomorrow, not in five years’ time.

But the way we have structured government for the last 100 years has been more about our own machinery and rules, than understanding, let alone meeting, the needs of our citizens.

And the blunt truth is that our now old but still in use structures do not make it easy to provide services when, where and how our citizens want and expect them.
So, we see the future in integrated services based on citizens’ needs, not government structures.

That means that our public sector agencies link up behind the scenes and take advantage of technology to deliver better outcomes for our people.

A driving question for us is why should our citizens trek from agency to agency providing the same information over and over again, when they can order their groceries, book holidays and pay their bills online?

The future we see – and it is not far away – literally starts when a child is born.

That new citizen’s birth registration will be the start of a lifelong digital relationship with government.

Throughout that person’s childhood, their parents will be prompted and connected with all of the various services their child will need, for example: their health number and tax number, reminders for immunisation and medical check-ups, information about family support entitlements.

As the child grows, parents and the child will be able to access school information and results and register for further education.

Significant birthdays would trigger more prompts, for example: to apply for a learner driver’s licence, to take over managing their own identity, and to enrol to vote.

Other significant life events, like registering for tertiary education, would bring the ability to apply for and manage their student loan.

And when they reach 65, this generation should never have to apply for their superannuation – we will proactively let them know when are eligible and how much they will receive.

Superannuation is a good example of using beneficially the information the government collects about a person during their lives.

We should ask ourselves now: why does a person who has paid tax throughout their life have to fill in forms to request their superannuation?

We know their birth date, their earnings and where they live.

If your pet food, nappy or contact lens supplier can remind you to reorder before you run out, why cannot your government let you know your entitlements before you have to ask?

The touch points between citizens and government agencies are known and predictable – they centre around life events like birth, marriage and death.

They also come at times of vulnerability, like sickness, job loss and suffering abuse.

One of my Ministerial colleagues has asked: why should a woman leaving an abusive relationship have to go to six different agencies to get help for herself and her children?

Surely, we can do better when our citizens are at their most vulnerable.

Not only can we, but the responsibility that comes with gathering and holding information about people means we must use effectively it, and efficiently to their advantage, when they need it.
So the digital journey is not really just about technology.

It is much more about our quest to exploit the enabling potential of technology to deliver better public services.

Digital is just a channel.

At its heart, government’s role is to serve our citizens – that is why we are here.

But this is not easy in an era of rapid change.

Technology seems to evolve faster every year.

We are witnessing global migration on an unprecedented scale.

Our populations are changing and our citizens are more globally connected than ever before.
They also expect to spend less time dealing with government and more time living their lives.

Obviously, our traditional government structures are not set up for the rapid transformations we need to make.

And the perennial fiscal constraints remain.

Governments worldwide are under pressure to do more with less.

But governments also have to serve our people, and we need to use all the tools at our disposal – technology, collaborating with citizens, the private sector and other governments, mining the information we hold – to achieve our goals.

Context:

The context is important.

New Zealand is a small country.

We are a long way from Europe and the only thing some people think they know about us is that we have three million people and 60 million sheep.

Actually, that is not correct any more, we are now 4.4 million people and only 31 million sheep.

But what most people do not know about New Zealand is that we are a nation of pioneers, innovators and early adopters.

Our size and distance may seem like a hindrance to some, but they have presented some distinct advantages, including an innovative spirit and being able to operate on a scale that makes it easy to test ideas and adopt them quickly.

Let me give you some examples.

About 20 years I was holidaying in York, and went to fill my car up at a local gas station.

I could not find on the pump where to push for the £20 I wanted to spend.

A curious attendant asked me what my problem was, and when I explained, she said the way to do it was to start pumping the petrol, and take out the pump when the £20 figure clicked over, all of which I found a little bizarre.

When I related this story to an oil company executive once I got back to Wellington, he was not at all surprised, and told that such an innovation was not then widely available.

In the oil industry’s experience, New Zealand and Malta were the early adopter countries where innovative new technologies such as I was used to were trialled first.

Electronic fund transfer technology (the all-too easy debit card) may have originated in the United States, but it was readily adopted in New Zealand and quickly became ubiquitous.

We had already logged our 5 billionth transaction by the time this technology took off with US consumers.

Xero, a New Zealand company that provides cloud-based accounting software for small to medium businesses spent its first five years honing its products in the New Zealand market.
Only three years after entering the UK market, more than 100,000 businesses are using Xero.

The company topped Forbes’ 100 Most Innovative Growth Companies list last year.

When Sir Peter Jackson started making films in the 1990s, he enlisted friends to help him build props and special effects.

Their ‘can do’ approach grew into Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, which gave us the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, and cutting-edge special effects for Avatar and many other Hollywood blockbusters.

Look out for the new Batman!

Significantly, I am not the only one who thinks our size and distance are assets.
The latest Global Innovation Index places New Zealand in the top 15, ahead of nations like Canada, Japan, Norway, and Australia too.

Our journey (and highlights along the way):

I mentioned earlier that our digital journey is a story about better public services.

Indeed, delivering Better Public Services is one of our Government’s four priorities for this term.

It sits alongside our promises to build a more competitive and productive economy, responsibly manage our finances and rebuild Christchurch following its two major earthquakes.

To make sure our agencies are focused on better public services, we have defined 10 result areas which aim to:
• Reduce welfare dependence
• Support vulnerable children
• Boost skills and employment
• Reduce crime
• Improve interaction with Government

Digital technology has a role to play in all of these areas by creating the platforms that enable information sharing and reducing costs so that we can spend our money making a difference to people’s lives, rather than building bespoke IT solutions.

Under the better public services programme, our Government is deliberately changing the way in which public services are delivered, and also, perhaps more importantly, we are changing the way the public service identifies and designs the services it provides.

Integrated digital services should be built around the needs of New Zealanders, rather than requiring our citizens to be experts in how government departments work.

As Minister of Internal Affairs, I am responsible for Result Area 10, which is about making it easy for New Zealanders to interact with government.

The specific actions to achieve this are outlined in our Result 10 Blueprint, which paints a picture of the future for the digital delivery of Government’s services: a future in which services will be built around citizens’ life events, rather than traditional agency boundaries.

As a government we are grasping the huge opportunity digital delivery offers to get more of our services out to those who need them, in a way that makes it easy for them to use.

Recognising the vital role of technology in delivering better public service, both as a critical enabler and for its potential to create greater efficiencies, we appointed a Government Chief Information Officer with a mandate to lead ICT transformation across the system.

Our GCIO is Colin MacDonald, who is here to take part in the panel discussion later.
His role includes: setting the policy, direction and standards for government ICT, working to improve ICT investment across the system, establishing and managing all-of-government services, shaping capability and providing ICT assurance across government.

Our model is ‘centrally led and collaboratively delivered’, which means agencies retain their decision-making autonomy but are expected to work with the GCIO in planning major investments and upgrades.

I appreciate that it is a different approach from the way you have set up GDS here in the UK.

In order to make sure everyone would know where we were going, we developed our first Government ICT Strategy and Action plan in 2013.

That document provided an excellent foundation, but proved to be complex.

So, last year, we consulted widely with government and industry players and revised the strategy to make it simpler and more flexible, to allow us to leverage emerging technologies.

This revised strategy now serves as our guiding document for ICT transformation across our system.

Also part of the foundational work was developing a range of reliable and effective all-of-government services that streamline ICT procurement.

One hundred and sixteen agencies are now using at least one of these common capabilities.

This allows us to save $70 million a year on ICT products and services across the system and move to consuming standard services, rather than building individual agency systems.

A stand-out example of our all-of-government contracts is the world first deal we agreed with Microsoft in 2012.

Other governments have now followed suit and our own agencies quickly grasped the value of the all-of-government contract versus negotiating individually, with 146 agencies signed up to the latest version.

With standards now also in place for privacy and assurance, we are another step closer to creating a common ICT platform across government.

System-wide change is hard to achieve within our existing structures so we have put more structure around our collaborative model to build more momentum.

We now have a partnership framework which includes an oversight group of chief executives and working groups in the areas of service innovation, technology, investment and information management.

This recognises the relationships and interdependencies between these streams of work and the contribution they make to transforming public services.

Fifty-five senior leaders from 21 agencies are working together to drive system transformation.

Early on we recognised the importance of digital identity and invested in a tool we call RealMe, which can be used in both the public and private sectors to enable identity agencies to verify information at the customer’s request.

Trust remains paramount.

Citizens will trust the government with their information only so long as they are confident we will not misuse it.

As more and more services move online, citizens are amassing a detailed digital identity which includes inherent characteristics such as date of birth, acquired information such as home address and other information such as purchase history.

Consumers are willing, even enthusiastic, about disclosing information where they can see the benefits and appropriate privacy controls are in place.
To deliver integrated services and protect privacy at the same time, we need the tools to do the job.

RealMe’s strengths lie in its design, which enables a seamless digital service for customers without creating a single database of information about an individual.

The customer maintains control over their personal information and can see where it has been shared.

They can use RealMe to access 67 services, like applying to open a bank account, enrolling to vote, and applying for student loans and allowances.

RealMe is a world-class solution tailored to the New Zealand environment.

While our technology transformation is underway, services and operations are also undergoing their own transformation.

If we are trying to make it as easy to interact with government as it is to order things online, we need to put the citizen at the centre.

That involves understanding our citizens better.

So we spoke to our customers to understand their experience, behaviours and attitudes to government services and we learned a few important things:
• Citizens contact government to achieve an outcome in their own life. It is not about the agency’s service but rather what it allows them to accomplish, for example, getting a passport to travel, or asking about financial assistance because they have lost their job
• Most people interact with government infrequently – two to three times a year
• Often those interactions are around life events – moments of big change in people’s lives
• Customers do not want to provide the same information multiple times
• People want reassurance that what they are doing is right and acknowledgment that agencies have received all the information required to progress applications.

We are using these findings to inform the development of new online services.

One of our best examples of digital technology delivering better public services is our passport.

In 2012, New Zealand launched the world’s first fully online passport renewal service.

People love it!

This is because they can work on their application and submit it any time that suits them from anywhere in the world.

Also, because 60% of applications involve no human intervention in the decision-making process, citizens often receive their new passport within three days.

My office and the Department of Internal Affairs receive a steady stream of positive feedback, and people often share their delight in social media.

Not complaints – compliments!

How often can you say that about government services?

Behind the scenes, our system takes full advantage of biometric technology and goes through 146 automated checks, maintaining the high integrity of our passports.

Within the first year, 25% of adult passport renewals were completed online and now we’re up to 48%.

We expect that number to rise again when we add childrens’ renewals next year and families are able to renew all their passports online.

We also plan is to enable first-time passport applications to be made online too.

We have come a long way since births, deaths and marriages records were kept in ledgers in churches and court houses.
Thousands of New Zealand parents are now registering the birth of their child online – often using their tablet and smartphone – rather than the traditional paper forms.

In April last year we introduced online birth registration.

It has been a tremendous success.

Today, more than 80% of births are registered online, proving that time-poor parents appreciate how easy this important transaction has become.

Registration is an important step to qualify children born in New Zealand for health, educational and other benefits.

Internal Affairs is now working with other agencies to integrate services around the birth of a child and other life events.

Constituents expect joined-up government.

As Minister of Internal Affairs and an MP, I am constantly struck by the number of constituents I see who genuinely assume that their basic information is already accessible by a range of government agencies.

They seem somewhat surprised and agitated when asked to provide it again.

Our challenge is to use the information we already hold in new, smarter ways and anticipate our citizens’ needs.

One way where we have made it easier to find and use government information online is our all-of-government website, Govt.nz.

In this instance, we have borrowed from the UK – thank you for sharing the Gov.uk source code.

User testing and feedback are a critical part of making sure government information is accessible and that Govt.nz meets citizens’ expectations.

We are migrating government website content more slowly than you have been in the UK, but it is quickly becoming the go-to site for anything government-related.

Appropriately, it is also home to our current campaign urging New Zealanders to have their say on our national flag.

According to the United Nations E-government survey released in 2014, New Zealand already shows “an exemplary commitment to the provision of transactional services” and is ranked 9th in the world (just behind the UK), which is up significantly from a couple of years ago.

Many of you will be aware that New Zealand, alongside the UK, is part of the D5 group of nations considered among the most advanced in the provision of online government services.

Other founding members are Estonia, South Korea and Israel.

D5 is an opportunity for like-minded countries to share experiences and learn from each other.

Certainly, New Zealand and the UK have a long shared history and culture.

While there are differences in how we have approached the digital journey, there are also many similarities and opportunities to work together.

Citizens’ digital transactions are already crossing borders and expectations that government transactions can be done digitally between countries will only increase.

It is clear that generic international standards for digital identity will be a critical enabler for global citizens, likely in the next 18 months, meaning that passport-less travel becomes more than a possibility.

What does the future look like?

The world is changing rapidly and, in many respects our citizens are ahead of government, both in expectations and in understanding the art of the possible.
Digital technology gives us the opportunity to make a real difference to people’s lives by making it easier for our citizens to accomplish their own life goals in education, buying a home, supporting their family, preparing for retirement.

We see the future in integrated services based on citizens’ needs, not government structures.

And it is a future where greater collaboration – with citizens, the private sector, other governments – will help us create a platform for meeting those needs.

Government does not have to build everything, but we do need to create an environment where new things are possible.

And it is time to challenge our assumptions about what can be achieved.

For example, why cannot your health information travel with you so that you can fill a prescription overseas?

And why cannot your travel agent help you renew your passport?

Governments need to keep evolving with the times and become more agile and responsive to our citizens to meet the challenges of the future.

At the same time, we must never lose sight of the fact that we are but the temporary custodians of our citizens’ information, and that our prime responsibility is to make sure that we are gathering only the information we need to deliver quality services, that the information we do receive is properly protected through privacy laws that are strong and robust to protect citizens from the intrusion of an ever-inquisitive state.

We must guard against this information becoming a convenient data mine for our security services, otherwise the tolerance of our citizens will quickly evaporate.

In New Zealand, we feel our size is a distinct advantage, enabling us to test and innovate more quickly than most.

We live in exciting times.

The opportunity before us comes around once in a generation.

If we can change the culture of the public service to put the citizen at the centre of our services and anticipate their needs, we can make a lasting impact long into the future.

ENDS

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