NZRise Co-Chair Don Christie shared his perspective on the opportunities and challenges ahead for our sector in the face of a new government and a new year. The breakfast event, arranged by ITP, drew a mixed audience of business, government and academic minds who enjoyed Don’s direct and candid delivery style.
The slides for his talk can be found here: DonChristieITPPresso
He welcomed the policies and early initiatives set out by our new Government summarising the opportunities they will be focusing on into three categories:
- Economic Prosperity
- Civil Society
- Open Technology and Infrastructure
Praising Minister Curran and her approach to “open everything” Don went on to describe the transformation opportunities in terms of cost, productivity and economic impact we could experience through reducing vendor lock-in and process bound procurement.
He left the audience with a clear sense of the possibilities for our sector and local economy and the prospect of ICT becoming the 2nd largest contributor to GDP. He also laid out this challenge as a key to that success:
Government has to make a fundamental shift from consumption creation
Finally, in concluding Don challenged our industry to step up in it’s obligation to society stating we have a fundamental duty of care and collective responsibility alongside government – praising those in the room who have been working tirelessly to change hearts, minds and process for many years.
This summary does not do Don’s talk justice so please review the slides.
Victoria MacLennan, Co-Chair, NZRise
