The march to New Zealand becoming an efficient digital nation is being strangled by selfish interests, charges Bennet Medary in an iStart release written by Donovan Jackson.
While government is frequently seen as both the solution for large scale issues and simultaneously the obstacle, Medary believes the current administration is on the right track. “One of the biggest advocates for a more effective nation is Bill English [and his ‘data highway’]. I can’t tell you how much I support his policy initiatives, programmes and work through Treasury, where he is looking to gain insights from public sector information to identify and target interventions that make a difference on an individual basis. With information technology, we can do that now.”
The ‘data sharing’ projects initiated by the government don’t generally benefit from the enthusiasm of a tech industry insider. Indeed, they tend to drive fear-mongering headlines (like ‘The government is watching you’) in the mainstream media and inspire shrieks of outrage from some on the more lunatic fringe.
But in Medary’s view, it is precisely this sort of approach which has to continue . . .
