Victoria and Don, alongside NZRise members Noel and Joe from AMS, met with Mayor Phil Goff and his team recently to discuss the opportunities Auckland presents for our industry and member companies.

From our summation of the discussion back to the Mayor:

“Like our members, we, and our staff are heavily invested in Auckland. We bring high paying jobs to the city along with Kiwi innovation, foreign investment and exports. We are part of your voters and ratepayers community.

As we discussed, we believe the Auckland Super City could have a pivotal role in the new Government’s ambition to make ICT the “second largest contributor to GDP by 2025”. This would benefit New Zealand and Auckland.

What we are suggesting are policies that create a fair playing field for local businesses. Too often we are excluded from being able to bid for work by corporates and government due to requirements that mean only the largest of global businesses get a look in. We have developed a series of procurement policies that have been adopted in other parts of the world, most notably the UK and Australia, that drive innovation, agility, value for money *and* local business opportunity into government. These are respectful of and compatible with WTO and other free trade commitments.

We would like to see if we can develop these policies further with Auckland CC in parallel to work we are undertaking with central government.”

Accompanying the Mayor included his director of ICT who we commended for carrying out a consultative approach to strategy development and his openness to working with our community this. We look forward to continuing discussions.

Victoria and Don, Co-Chairs NZRise

Note: Victoria thought about taking a cheeky selfie from the Mayor’s office but instead took this photo of the view which highlights the infrastructure investment programme Auckland is currently undertaking.

Thanks to Noel and Joe for arranging this constructive meeting.

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