IDC 2021 Government Insights Executive Forum

2020 was a wake-up call for governments around the world as digital transformation was redefined and recalibrated to adapt to a very different world. Intense pressure was placed on the need to ramp up and supercharge digital services for citizens requiring culture change, enhanced citizen engagement and revamped working models. In her welcoming address to attendees at this forum, Louise Francis, Country Manager and Research Director at IDC New Zealand, will present the latest research and trends that will shape the way governments will operate, engage and compete in the global digital economy beyond 2021.

New Zealand is reimagining its digital government – one that will be based on trust, personalized, and seamless experiences in lifelong journeys for citizens, local enterprises, and national digital services. Join Dr. Chris Holmes, Managing Director, IDC Insights Asia Pacific, with his keynote address: A Resilient Future Government, A Resilient New Zealand - Harnessing Technologies to Create Forward-Looking Digital Services for the Nation.

“New agile policies and enabling digital services are expected to empower individuals, create wide-spread equity and opportunities for all, spearhead the future economy, as well as deliver excellent social and policy results. Such new outcomes and value-creation pursuits are however, not without regulatory, cybersecurity, procurement, and redundancy risks. As the global digital landscape further accelerates from an applied multiple innovation chapter to that of autonomy landscapes, one can expect exponential growth of self-learning and self-iterative digital government innovation; highly integrated, intuitive and anticipative invisible technologies that reside on highly scalable platforms; and ubiquitous personalization services through robust industry ecosystems. Join me as I share actionable insights and best practices through policy creation and digital technology uses to navigate the unchartered waters of building New Zealand's resilient future government,” says Dr. Chris Holmes.

In June 2020, the Government announced New Zealand would host the Asia Pacific Economic Forum (APEC) 2021, entirely virtually. With the first meeting in December, 2020, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade had under six months to begin a virtual year that didn’t just connect officials, but was also secure and engaging. While 2020 APEC host Malaysia hosted meetings virtually, no other economy has attempted a fully virtual year before.

 The APEC New Zealand team has embraced New Zealand’s creative technical thinking to host this year long event. With the end goal of supporting APEC’s economic response to COVID-19, and achieving New Zealand’s policy objectives.

Join APEC New Zealand’s CTO Stuart Gregory to hear more about the role technology is playing in keeping thousands of government officials connected across 21 Asia Pacific economies, multiple time zones and thousands of meetings throughout the year. He will also share some of the ways technology is being used to facilitate the human to human interactions of physical meetings, supporting relationship strengthening and the achievement of policy outcomes for New Zealand.

Inland Revenue is in the midst of transforming its business in one of the largest and most ambitious programmes in the Southern Hemisphere; it’s a once in a generation opportunity to modernize tax administration in New Zealand.

Inland Revenue’s multi-year, multi-release Business Transformation programme is re-shaping the way it serves New Zealanders. It’s enabled by:

• Simplifying policy and legislative settings

• Proactively ensuring that customers get it right from the start

• Fitting revenue processes seamlessly into people’s lives

• Creating an organisation that works togethers better by making more intelligent use of information to improve outcomes for customers

• Implementing a modern, COTS-based technology platform (START) that is digitally based and highly automated.

The programme is carefully planned into multiple releases and managed business changes to minimise change impacts for customers while maintaining Inland Revenue’s revenue collection functions without disruption and importantly, delivering significant value with each release. Gary will share lessons learnt and outline how we minimise change impacts for customers and maintain Inland Revenue’s critical revenue collection functions without disruption; while ensuring real value is delivered at every stage.

BNZ has been on an agile/dev ops journey for a number of years increasing both operational excellence and delivery execution, however opportunity for improvement still exists. With a growing portfolio of complex systems and more demand driven by COVID-19 and other significant 2021 market forces - a re-think was required. What did BNZ need to do to get more for less? There were many great suggestions, but as usual they were qualitative, and lacked specific data to support improvement decisions. Dr Mik Kersten’s “Product to Project” and the use of Flow Metrics provides a new perspective for Technology teams adopting a data driven approach to improvement. The Flow Framework allows BNZ to follow work from concept to cash to identify bottlenecks and delays from a value stream, rather than just a specific team or departmental perspective. Understanding how work flowed from team to team and out to customers is leading to new insights including finding persistent bottlenecks and delays. Using flow data to drive improvements has helped highlight where to focus investments for maximum return.

Paul will share the insights and how BNZ are Removing Waste: Getting more for less through flow data insights.

As NZ went into lockdown, there were over 800,000 students in 2,500 schools/kura needing to continue learning from home, and for some ongoing, exposing the digital divide and gaps in digital capability. The Ministry of Education responded with a range of support through dedicated TV broadcasts, hardcopy materials, student household connectivity and devices.

Mark will share the challenges, and wider Implications for digital public services.

People have experienced huge benefits from digital innovations in areas like air travel, banking and retail. They expect nothing less from the health and disability system and yet limited access to health information and opportunities to use digital health services to interact with their care providers hinders New Zealanders from participating actively in, and better managing, their health and wellbeing. 

Vaughan Robertson, Group Manager – Technology Strategy at Beca will describe the steps to date and current state of the Beca journey to becoming a “Digital Business”.

Within the global economy IDC predicts that 65% of GDP will be digitalised by 2022. The New Zealand government and its digital leadership teams must now proactively deal with predominantly hybrid nature of their IT environments, workforces, processes, and ecosystems to set their agency on a successful course in an increasingly volatile and digital economy. In this panel discussion, with business and government leaders who have embraced innovation and thrived during a time of change, we will delve into ways to build capabilities that create sustainable leadership in the a digital economy as it emerges from a crisis. Key themes will be:

• Lessons learnt from a crisis – How do you come out stronger on the other side?
• The role of people and organisational culture – what are the roadblocks and accelerators of change?
• Tackling the challenge of productivity – what can NZ government do?
• The power of digital inclusion and equity: where do we start?
• How can agencies embrace a culture of risk taking for innovation in a risk averse public sector?

The Ministry is engaged in the formation and implementation of the state policy in the field of digital development of the country, in the fields of innovation, communications, public services, electronic industry, as well as engaged in the development of e-government, coordination of the activities of the State Corporation "Government for Citizens", information security, aerospace industry, geodesy and cartography.