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8 April 2005

New Zealand's Digital Strategy

Hon David Cunliffe.
Speech to EDUCAUSE Conference

It is my pleasure on behalf of the New Zealand government to welcome you to our country and to thank you all for your participation in this fascinating conference which I know will have important dividends for our two countries. We have a saying in Aotearoa

He aha te mea nui o te Ao. He tangata, he tangata, he tangata

What is the greatest thing of the world? People, people, people

And from what I have seen of this conference, for all its emphasis on technology, that that is a perspective that is shared.

We live in an age where we can receive and decode the faintest of signals from a probe sent to explore another world, invisible to the naked eye and billions of kilometres away; where we have unravelled the genetic signature of plants and animals that we weren't even aware existed a few decades ago; and where unimaginable amounts of data can be sent anywhere in the world in a fraction of a second. Yet what is the value of this knowledge unless it translates into better understanding of how we need to work together to manage the planet's resources and how it can be used to enhance all people's lives?

And it is people like yourselves who will make this happen - people with a passion for sharing quality information, for ensuring high standards in and equality of access to education and, most importantly, people who understand the critical importance of collaboration. It is absolutely clear that with the increasing convergence of science and the exponential growth in computing power and communications that collaboration is not just an opportunity, it is essential if we are to realise the benefits of these new technologies for everyone and not just a few main players.

Australia and New Zealand, and our Pacific Island neighbours, occupy a significant portion of the globe and it is to everyone's advantage that those regional ties are strengthened through a robust and collaborative "cyber infrastructure". And I would like to suggest that that robustness begins at the grassroots level with the people in our communities. That is the basis for New Zealand's Digital Strategy, which will shortly be released, and which I appreciate this opportunity to share with you.

Before I do, I want to take a few moments to draw the context for you because, as close as we are, there are important differences in the challenges that we each face and the ways we meet them.

From the very beginning, this government has held the view that learning, innovation and knowledge will be the key factors for determining the New Zealand's social and economic success. The Knowledge Wave Conference held in 2001, which called together leading business people, academics, community leaders and government officials called for a widely shared vision for New Zealand and set the scene for the consultation and partnership that has been our hallmark.

The Growth and Innovation Framework that followed in 2002 set the strategic direction for New Zealand. It defined a clear pathway to move the country forward, detailing the necessary conditions for growth and focussing our resources in areas where

• we already have a leading edge;
  
• there is a high potential for growth; and *there is high potential for diffusion.

Consequently Taskforces were appointed to advise the government in areas selected for their high growth/high impact potential and Information and Communications Technologies was an obvious choice. A raft of both general and specific initiatives followed the recommendations of the Taskforces aimed at establishing the right conditions for stimulating sustained economic growth.

Those conditions include the regulatory environment, particularly for telecommunications where digital technologies have transformed the industry and its potential and its importance. New Zealand's transition over the past 25 years from a heavily protected environment to one completely open to market forces has not been without its problems.

In 1999 we were faced with a telecommunications industry that was dominated by one player and where efforts to deliver competition were largely been stalled in the courts. The Telecommunications Act in
2001 resolved many of these issues, mainly through setting up an independent arbiter whose legislated objective is to promote competition for the long-term benefit of the user - again, we have put people first.

We are just starting to reap the benefits of this even-handed regulatory regime - we do have real competition and it is delivering lower prices which means greater accessibility. I should perhaps point out here that NZ has always had a very high take-up of connection to the Internet. Through what's known as the Kiwi Share Obligation or more properly the Telecommunication Service Obligations
(TSO) the provision of an affordable local telephone service has always been guaranteed - we do not pay for local calls, so dial up Internet access is virtually free. So we have been faced with the perhaps unique problem of being very quick to take to the new technology, but very slow to take up broadband where the real benefits of ICT can be realised. There are encouraging signs that lower prices have seen the doubling of Broadband take up in the last quarter of last year.

There will always be areas, however, where private sector provision is uneconomic. Three years ago the government acted to prevent the potential exclusion of the rural community from internet access by initiating Project PROBE - Provincial Broadband Extension. This highly successful project which provided funds to "top up" what would be non-commercial provision of broadband to rural areas was rolled out on a region by region basis. For just under $50 million dollars, NZ will have 100% broadband coverage in a few months time and that coverage has been provided by a variety of Telcos.

Other interesting programmes include the e-government strategy, a four phase programme for the integration of information, service delivery and government processes from a single point is being implemented. Already we're seeing the exciting potential of ICT to deliver broader and deeper democratic participation through such projects as the online Census trial and the Bioethics Council's Online Consultation on Xenotransplantation.

Land Information New Zealand LINZ is currently developing a Geospatial framework allowing for the interoperability of datasets within government. There is enormous potential here for marrying up physical and human resources and once the right metadata systems and protocols have been established much of this information, currently locked up in different organisations, will be accessible. Access to layers of information, including the most important bottom layer which is what's going on at the community level, and including voice, video and data sets will have enormous benefits. It will enable us to make decisions based on sound and comprehensive information and to share that knowledge both locally and globally. I hope the message is that digital technologies offer opportunities for maximising the potential for every citizen for the benefit of all.

I won't mention all the individual strategies of various other government departments, although I will be telling you more about what has been happening in the education sector. But you can see that, having made the first important moves, there was a need to establish unifying vision for the use of digital technologies in New Zealand. It was in this context that the Digital Strategy was born.
The strategy is a result of a whole-of-government (and beyond) process, coordinated by the Ministry of Economic Development.

In building the draft strategy we drew upon a useful frame of
reference: the Declaration of Principles adopted by the international community at the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society. The WSIS Declaration defined a number of key principles for realising the idea of an information society. The principles were adapted to suit our particular needs and informed the development of the focus areas in the Digital Strategy. They will continue to guide the government's actions to implement the Strategy. The key areas covered include:

• Enabling conditions such as:

• Content
  
• Confidence
  
• Connection
  
• And demand conditions in:

• Business
  
• Communities
  
• Government

We consulted widely in both formulating the draft Digital Strategy and after its release. Four business and 10 community fora were held for face to face feedback and there were about 200 written submissions, most of these from organisations who had held consultations within their own group or sector. The widespread engagement from the ICT sector, business, local government, community groups and individuals testifies to the enthusiasm and commitment of people to ensure that New Zealand maximises the advantages that ICT offers.

I'm delighted to say that the response to the Digital Strategy has been overwhelmingly supportive of the general direction the Digital Strategy outlined and we have had some very thoughtful and constructive advice about some grey areas. The advantage of this whole process is that I feel we have been able to get everyone on board and have already identified key people and agencies who will be able to deliver the goods.

The draft Strategy is, in essence, very straightforward. Its aspirational vision to be a world leader at using information and technology to realise our economic social and cultural goals is underpinned by a commitment to see that all New Zealanders will benefit from ICT.

(Which is not to say that all people will be dragged kicking and screaming to a computer screen whether they like it or not! Rather it is a commitment from government to realise the power of ICT to deliver the best, most efficient, most holistic services it can for the benefit of all. )

Firstly it identifies the three areas need for widespread diffusion of ICT

• good relevant and timely Content;
  
• the skills to use ICT effectively - Confidence and capability; and *affordable access to ICT infrastructure - Connection.

The parallel delivery of all three 'C's is essential.

Secondly it identifies the government's role in realising the benefits to

• Facilitate communities and individuals to use ICT effectively *Promote innovation in New Zealand businesses; and *Use ICT to transform government.

The three 'c's framework in New Zealand's Strategy fits well with the concept of the power of collaboration:

• IT -Connected
  
• Libraries/e-learning - Content
  
• e-learning/flexible learning - Confidence *Power of three - Collaboration

New Zealand's digital strategy needs to make a difference to every New Zealander, no matter what their economic, social and educational needs are, whether it for a small polytechnic in rural New Zealand, a large multinational company like Fonterra or a prestigious University like many of those here today.

I'd like now to focus on the Education sector, particularly the Tertiary sector and look at how the sector is mapping its activities to the strategy. What progress have we made so far?

In September 2003 the Minister of Education the Hon Trevor Mallard established an ICT Standing Committee for Education. He charged the committee with delivering a "joined-up" Education sector where it was sensible to do so using ICTs to deliver common technical architectures, joined up data, metadata standards based on international schema and e learning architectures based on all of these principles. The Standing Committee's vision was to see "Raising learner achievement an innovative sector fully connected and supported, by smart use of ICT".

The principles on which the sector would operate showed a will to be 'joined up', all developments were to be learner-centric, innovative, affordable, interoperable, xml/web based standards driven with data collected only once. Quite an agenda I am sure you would all agree!
And, those involved on the Standing Committee tell me that the first six months were very difficult indeed. Early on one Standing Committee member reflected that if the Minister had taken his foot off the collaboration accelerator for one minute we would all probably have reverted to our silos - it was we acknowledge, a very difficult agenda we were setting the sector.

The strategy and collaboration between all education agencies has involved enormous cultural change. We are talking about the continuum from Early Childhood Education, Compulsory Education, Tertiary including Universities, Polytechnics and Wananga and the New Zealand research infrastructure as well. There were many different business drivers and educational cultures to understand.

18 months on the news is really very good indeed. The CEOs of TEC, NZQA, ERO, Careers Service, Teachers Council, and the e-Government Unit who have driven the strategy led by Secretary of Education Howard Fancy as the Chair, and National Librarian Penny Carnaby as Deputy Chair, have done a magnificent job in driving the strategy, and while there is still much to do, there is great pleasure and satisfaction in what has been achieved. Importantly the expert sub-committees are now working well together across each part of the education agencies and the National Library.

The ICT Strategy for education has mapped all of its activities to the Digital Strategy. The 'report card' is looking good under the 3c's framework, though the Education framework has expanded this to 5 'c's.

• Connectivity - looks at standards driven ICT infrastructure connecting all parts of New Zealand society.
  
• Content - this is e-content from a variety of sources, and
  repositories: many purposes and users to support teaching, learning and research.
  
• Capability -All New Zealanders have the skills needed to turn information into knowledge.
  
• Continuity - Preserving New Zealand's digital heritage for future generations of learners.
  
• Collaboration - A seamless across-education framework.

So what has happened?

Achieving a connected sector has been our first focus and by December
2005 a high speed communications network, the Advanced Research Network, will begin its role linking in New Zealand Universities, Polytechnics, Wananga and Crown Research Institutes by the fourth quarter of this year. The government has committed over $40 million over a four year period to this. Since Australia is a key area for collaborative science it is likely that connecting to an Australian NREN particularly AARNET will be part of early stage international connectivity objectives.

To give you some idea of the potential this offers our research institutes, recently the Auckland University of Technology held an International Astrophysics and Astronomy forum which looked at the potential for New Zealand to join Australia in its bid for the Square Kilometre Array a billion dollar international radio astronomy project which will use digital technology and the advanced research networks to link antennas in both countries to make a telescope with the a resolution a hundred times that of the Hubble space Telescope.
Indeed trials for Trans-tasman Interferometry are just starting.

What marks this project and is, I think, typical of the synergies that we will continue to see as international collaboration continues to grow, is that it is a win win situation. Australia is a world leader in Radio astronomy whereas NZ is new to it, but adding just one antenna in NZ would vastly improve the capability of Australia's bid.

As I mentioned earlier, the rural education institutions including all New Zealand schools will be connected by Project PROBE, a lower specification broadband infrastructure, soon. OtagoNet is a fine example of just what this has enabled. Eleven Otago area schools and high schools have been sharing resources, educational content and teachers over a network called OtagoNet.

Through high speed connections that allow video conferencing and data links, the school cluster is able to share teaching resources more effectively and offer students a wider range of subjects that they would not otherwise be able to offer as they are able to share teachers through video conferencing.

For example, Year 13 Computer Studies is taught at Mt Aspiring School and four other schools in the region simultaneously through the Ministry of Education's video bridge. There are also video conference classes for Year 13 Art History, Chemistry, Physics, and Biology. Mt Aspiring School is also able to run its own website directly from a server within the school. They've had video linkups with scientists in Antarctica, renowned anthropologist Anne Salmond and rower Rob Hamill.

Currently, OtagoNet schools are establishing links with public primary schools in Oklahoma, United States. This is a new initiative that will allow students in both countries to benefit from information exchange on a variety of subjects including culture, history and geography. Other developments include establishing links with tertiary institutions such as rural polytechnics which offer resources on agriculture and horticultural studies - resources not readily available to students in the conventional school environment.

There has been good progress in developing an Education Sector Architectural Framework with joined-up thinking on data collection, systems, metadata standards and hardware purchasing, interoperability.

The substantial investment in the Advanced Research Network and $19m over four years to develop the Education Sector Architectural Framework underpins the Government's commitment to interoperability in ICT in Education.

We are seeing good progress in the area of e-learning with $28m over four years allocated to e-learning projects, through the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) ECDF. These projects have lifted capability and confidence in the sector.

I know with a great number of University and Polytechnic librarians in the audience you will be interested in the content "c", particularly in relation to scholarly communication in published e-journals, institutional e-print and e publishing repositories. In regard to content while each tertiary institution has its own access to e-journals to fit their own learning, teaching and research endeavours, I particularly want to refer to the innovative and progressive approach taken by the New Zealand library and information sector which is looking at new ways of delivering information to every New Zealander through the libraries of New Zealand.

The EPIC Project (Electronic Purchasing in Collaboration) which has delivered a world leading, all-of-country approach to purchasing e-journals has seen access to well over 16,000 full text e-journals to every citizen and delivered through the libraries of New Zealand.
Without the support and leadership of the tertiary sector, 100% of polytechnics and wananga and seven out of our eight universities, this ground-breaking project wouldn't have got off the ground.

EPIC, along with the award winning Matapihi Project (images from art galleries/museums/libraries and archives), AnyQuestions.co.nz, where librarians online help students to locate information, and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage's recently launched Te Ara Online Encyclopaedia of New Zealand project, are all projects filling the infrastructure pipes with rich content - it is a crucial contribution to the NZ Digital Strategy and I understand that EPIC will expand in the future to include more specialist content in the sciences and will grow more New Zealand content.

I might also add that most of these projects offer bilingual services and are available in Te Reo. We have a unique culture in Aotearoa, one that is firmly referenced by the Tangata Whenua and that is a focus of pacific cultures. (Auckland is the demographic centre of the
Pacific.) That point of difference is precious to us and we have a special responsibility to nourish it, not only for ourselves but also for the rest of the world. It is interesting to note, for example, that the largest collection of written indigenous archival records are in Mâori and we are proud to note that these are currently being digitised.

This e-content will of course provide important resources for teaching, learning and research endeavours of New Zealand's tertiary institutions and also provides rich content for next generation e-learning environments, the topic of several papers at this conference. It was pleasing to note therefore that last week the Ministry of Education and the National Library of New Zealand met with senior DEST officials in Australia to finalise an agreement which will see New Zealand as an associate member of the DEST/JISC (UK government) e-learning Framework and IMS Global initiatives. This agreement opens the door to far more trans-Tasman collaboration on e-learning digital library and institutional repository projects and we are very grateful to DEST for facilitating New Zealand's involvement.

One other trans-Tasman agreement which may interest you is the recently signed contract with Macquarie University e-Learning Centre of Excellence (MELCOE) with the Ministry of Education and National Library of New Zealand to run a pilot of the LAMS (Learning Activity Management System) e-learning design project in several New Zealand schools and polytechnics. Importantly New Zealand's project will bring the e-content from the digital library I described earlier, into the LAMS environment, so that e-content is far more accessible to the learner and will impact on pedagogy in a far more direct way than has previously been possible.

The implementation of programmes such as these is exciting and important, but I do not need to point out to this audience the value of monitoring and research. The Ministry of Education has a contestable fund for research into the current context and future impact of e-learning on tertiary education organisations in New Zealand, the Teriary e-Learning Research Fund (TeLRF). Up to five projects are funded to the combined value of $300 000 and this is now in its second year, and fits well within the Tertiary e-learning strategic framework.

So the report card for education is very positive indeed in relation to the New Zealand Digital Strategy and while there is still much to do, we have begun to see the benefits of an across-sector approach to ICT development in education.

I congratulate all of the partners in the power of 3 - IT, e-learning and library, in the tertiary sector in New Zealand who are making such a positive contribution to New Zealand strategy.

Finally may I extend my thanks to Educause and the organisers of this conference. I know that it is through the personal contacts made at occasions like these as well as exposure to many new ideas and information that relationships are forged and progress is made. I look forward to continuing and extending the collaboration between our two countries and within our region.

Waiho i te toipoto, kaua i te toiroa

Let us keep close together, not wide apart

Thank you.