NZTech Inform – it’s time to be cyber smart!

Thank goodness the election is over and Government can quickly get back to business. Labour’s return to Government is good news for tech. Their economic growth policy takes a leaf out of the Singapore playbook, with a focus on industry transformation.   

During the first lockdown, Cabinet refocused their industry policy on “a narrower set of sectors (digital tech, advanced manufacturing and parts of food and fibre) that are well-positioned for and will benefit from a high-intensity and high-investment approach where we consider a sector could become a highly productive and internationally competitive cluster of businesses.  Helping these sectors transform will be key priorities for the Economic Development portfolio.” 

The Digital Technology Industry Transformation Plan (ITP) development is well underway with collaborative workstreams digging into changes in the education pathways to accelerate the development of local skills, changes in Government procurement approaches to stimulate the local tech sector, a deep dive into tech export successes and the development and activation of a strong tech story for New Zealand. There is also work being done on the development of a national AI strategy and data driven innovation. Work on the advanced manufacturing ITP has also started and this should be beneficial to the high-tech manufacturing and biotechnology parts of the tech sector. 

The ITPs provide a structure, like never before, to proactively and collaboratively drive change with Government, to stimulate and support the growth of the tech sector. Please email the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) if you would like to be involved in any of this work: IndustryTransformationPlans@mbie.govt.nz

On another note, this week is CERT’s cyber smart week. In an increasingly digital world, it is important for everyone to be cyber smart. Even if you work in tech and think you are cyber safe, it’s always worth reviewing your practices, because no one is immune. Once you’ve updated your cyber smarts, don’t forget to remind family and friends to keep up to date too.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our 2020 digital skills shortage survey. We are keeping the survey open one more week to allow a couple of the very big tech employers to extract detailed information from their human resources systems. So if you missed last week’s cut off but would still like to contribute, you can: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/digitalskills2020-nztech

Have a great week. 
Ngā mihi

Graeme Muller 
CEO
NZTech 

PS: Recycle A Device (RAD) want to know who decides what happens to your used laptops. Please answer their quick survey here and help close the digital divide. 

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