A Review of New Zealands Digital Strategy
Wairua Consulting Limited < andy@wairua.co.nz >
The advent of New Zealands world-leading Digital Strategy underpins the
increasing importance of ICTs in community settings.
It also marks a significant change in government policy and the first time a
government has adopted a whole of government approach to ICTs.
This article provides a personal view of the policy process for creating the
Digital Strategy, presented by one of the participants in that process. It contextualises the Digital Strategy in CI initiatives in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and identifies important issues attending
its implementation and future.
The advent of New Zealands world-leading Digital Strategy underpins the
increasing importance of ICTs in community settings.
It also marks a significant change in government policy and the first time a
government has adopted a whole of government approach to ICTs.
As the introduction to the Digital
Strategy says, it is about Aotearoa/New Zealand
becoming a world leader in using information and technology to realise its economic, social, environmental and cultural
goals, to the benefit of all its people (New Zealand Government,
2005, p. 4). In order to contextualise the Digital
Strategy, this article will look briefly at the context for Community
Informatics (CI) initiatives in Aotearoa/New Zealand,
identifying the issues facing such projects. It then goes on to position the
new Digital Strategy from its
evolution as a draft strategy, through a consultation process to the final
release. It will describe some of the ideas behind the strategy, the processes
for its implementation (where these are known) and some of the potential
limitations, including a project-centric focus and a lack of framework for
implementation. Finally, the funding made available to CI initiatives through
the strategy is discussed.
By necessity, this is a brief (and personal) review
of the Digital Strategy. You can read
the strategy for yourself at www.digitalstrategy.govt.nz.
You can also read another perspective, by Williams, Sligo
and Wallace, in this issue of the Journal
of Community Informatics.
Many local CI initiatives exist in Aotearoa/New Zealand, including literacy and training,
access to websites, telecentres, management tools and
discussion forums. Many of these appear highly successful and some
world-leading and local research indicates that ICTs
are improving outcomes for stakeholders of community organisations
by making services more inclusive and accessible (Craig, Dashfield,
& Thomson, 2003; Craig & Williamson, 2005). Research indicates that local CI initiatives tend to be over-reliant
on goodwill and voluntary resources and, because of this, their existence can
be perilous (Day, 2004). This is certainly the case in New Zealand and a primary issue must be
workforce development (using the term in its broadest sense). In a recent
summary of four of my own CI research projects (Williamson, 2005), I identified key themes across the projects: Funding; access; planning
and partnerships.
Funding
Funding is a significant concern for most
community-based projects. Problems associated with funding have a flow-on
effect in terms of the sustainability of the project and with regards to
staffing, training and the acquisition of appropriate and up-to-date equipment.
ICTs are now considered to be core business by many
community-based organisations, yet funding is still
in most cases only available on a project-by-project basis.
Access
Appropriate and timely access to ICTs is an obvious need and there is a clear requirement in
New Zealand to provide solutions that can bridge socioeconomic divides,
allowing all citizens who wish to use ICTs to be able
to access them. It is not simply access that is important but the immediacy of
that access in terms of fully utilising ICTs for both personal and community activities.
Planning
Planning is seen as important to the success of CI
projects. However, the over-reliance on volunteers coupled with a lack of
funding means that there is seldom the time or skills available in a CI project
to do sufficient planning. Solutions must be planned and outcomes described and
agreed upon at the community level. A top-down approach does not work well for
community ICTs. This points to an obvious need to
share knowledge and information about initiatives; not only those that are
successful but the lessons to learn from those that are not. It suggests a need
for a knowledge base or toolkit of ideas but does not promote the flawed
idea of best practice or a one-size-fits all approach.
Partnerships
If resources are limited, then sustainability is
difficult to obtain. A solution to this is to encourage the sharing of ideas
and resources and to support the building of partnerships that can offer
sustainability. Such partnerships can exist between community-based organisations, local government, central government and the
NGO sector. Where communities can work together, additional benefits and
economies of scale can be realised (Williamson, 2003).
If the Digital
Strategy is to succeed, it must address these four themes.
The potential value of CI was first recognised at a policy level through the Connecting
Communities Strategy (Community Employment
Group, 2002), which aimed to improve
access to, and the effective use of, ICTs amongst
communities. More recently, the Draft
Digital Strategy and, evolving from
that, the newly released Digital Strategy
(New Zealand Government,
2004, 2005) have been developed to
provide an integrated framework for existing and future initiatives to
encourage the uptake and effective use of ICTs for
economic, social and cultural gain(New Zealand Government,
2004, p. 2). It is significant because
it sets the policy and funding agendas for CI initiatives in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The Digital Strategy signals a realisation
that a whole of government approach to ICT is required and that, even in a
developed country such as New Zealand, ubiquity and sustainability of ICT, or
innovation through ICT, cannot be assumed. The model used in the strategy is
internationally significant because it is has emerged after the First World
Summit on the Information Society (WSIS, 2004) and adopts the WSIS tri-sectoral model of
government, business and civil society (or community).
The Draft
Digital Strategy (New Zealand Government,
2004) was a discussion document,
setting out what the government thought it needed to do. Publication of this
document was followed by significant consultation with business, government and
community stakeholders through meetings, presentations and the opportunity to
make written submissions. It was my personal opinion that the Draft Digital Strategy was an excellent
first step but that it was weak in a number of areas. Particularly, an overt
focus on replicating best practice risked being paternalistic and limiting,
and no attempt was made to address the ongoing sustainability of CI
initiatives. Perhaps the greatest omission was the lack of any tangible
delivery mechanism. These issues are addressed to some degree in the final Digital Strategy (New Zealand Government,
2005).
The final version of the Digital Strategy is surprisingly brief. It (rightly) refrains from
repeating much of the background information present in the Draft strategy, instead focussing on the way forward. The Digital Strategy addresses social and cultural good,
however, there is significant emphasis on economic benefit. In this regard it
differs from traditional approaches to the digital divide, which identify
exclusion as a primarily social problem (Thomson & Craig, 2004). The Digital Strategy builds
on the Draft strategy by describing
an ongoing funding mechanism for project-based initiatives. Whilst it is not
clear how the fund will operate at this early stage, an Advisory Group has been
formed and it is evident that a framework will need to be developed to manage
the allocation of funding. Whereas, in this regard, the Draft strategy appeared laissez-faire
and subjective, the final strategy is a significant improvement but still fails
to explicitly promote frameworks for evaluating outcomes or effectiveness.
However, it appears anecdotally that this might be remedied in the
implementation. The naïve and somewhat flawed assumption that what works in one
location will be successful in another, inherent in the Draft strategy, is gone in the final version. This is fortunate
since CI initiatives generally disprove the myth of best practice; they are
not the result of technological determinism but of the appropriate social
construction of technology in a specific and localised
context (Williamson, 2003). One problem remaining in the Digital
Strategy is the lack of any distinction between projects and ICTs as a business as usual component of communities.
Whilst the Digital Strategy does
provide project-based funding, it still does little to address how projects can
become operationalized and sustainable.
Unfortunately, the economic model privileged in the Digital Strategy reinforces a short-term approach to competitive
funding and the high risk of technocratic/bureaucratic intervention on a
project basis at the expense of sustainability and operationalisation.
As Day (2004) cautions, this short-term approach has historically been detrimental to
CI initiatives and it is hoped that this issue can be resolved in the
implementation. Particularly significant in this regard is the appointment of
an Advisory Board who can promote the importance of long-term sustainability.
Funding
for CI projects
Words and grand ideas are one thing. Money is quite
another. Fortunately, the Digital
Strategy does contain significant new funding allocations for CI related
initiatives. It is evident that New Zealand lacks the fiscal and economic
resources to fund projects on the same scale as Canada and the UK; we are
simply too small. However, it is often said that what we lack in dollars we can
make up for in ingenuity and commitment. This is, perhaps, the key driver
behind the funding component of the Digital
Strategy. The key here is partnership: Partnership is a key component
underpinning the new Digital Strategy
and is perhaps the best opportunity for individual communities to achieve
effective solutions with limited resources.
Funding will be provided to projects that can demonstrate working
partnerships between communities, government agencies or the private sector.
This implies that funding is to seed what has already been evaluated as a
viable initiative and will hopefully ensure that sustainability can be
achieved. For CI initiatives, there are two key funds:
In addition, NZ$1.44m is available for remote areas
to access broadband and some funding remains in the Connecting Communities
strategy. This is significant and real money going into CI initiatives for the
first time in New Zealand.
Impact
on Research
The Digital
Strategy will require an evaluation framework to monitor money spent and
this presents CI researchers both locally and internationally with an
opportunity to influence what good CI research means. Successful community
informatics projects are embedded within communities and support the
aspirations of the community that they serve (Day, 2003). Research and evaluation is important for learning and sharing. It is
itself an aspect of partnership. However, it is of critical importance in a
community-based setting that the researchers are seen as participants in the
process as well as observers within the study. This process is like paddling a
waka
[canoe] alongside [the community] (Williamson & DeSouza, 2003, p. 20), acknowledging our own role as guests but also developing relationships
with the participants. This approach is consistent with that recommended by Guba and Lincoln, who promote that participants [are]
accorded the privilege of sharing their constructions and working toward a
common, consensual, more fully informed and sophisticated, joint construction,
[where] they [are] accorded a full measure of conceptual parity (Guba
& Lincoln, 1989, p. 11). In particular, we need to promote the value of rigorous qualitative
research and the use of participants stories as being equally as important as
more traditional quantitative studies.
Whilst it is still early days the Digital Strategy is an exciting document
that offers significant potential for CI practitioners and researchers in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The Digital Strategy is a whole of government approach to ICTs and the Advisory Group will advise and, hopefully,
influence a number of Ministers and Ministries. This presents us with a serious
opportunity to increase the importance and knowledge of ICTs
in developing our communities through a broader policy setting. At the
grassroots, the Strategy appears to
support locally emerging solutions and partnerships that can lead to
sustainability. It contains funding for access and education, which are
critical if all sectors of society are to be brought along. Whilst there are
some limitations, this is to be expected in such a new and wide-ranging
strategy. The pattern so far has been one of evolution through consultation and
it is hoped that this process will continue, allowing the Strategy to be fine
tuned as it is rolled out.
This Digital Strategy
clearly has the potential to position Aotearoa/New
Zealand as a world leader in CI initiatives. It offers direct solutions to
issues of funding and access and, through the promotion of partnerships that
can lead to increased collaboration and better skills, it supports long-term
sustainability. Whilst only time will tell whether this works, I suspect that
what we do next will be watched very closely.
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(2002). Connecting communities: A strategy for
government support of community access to Information and Communications
Technology. Wellington, NZ: Department of Labour.
Craig, B., Dashfield,
B., & Thomson, I. (2003). Community information and
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University of Wellington.
Craig, B., & Williamson, A. (2005). Survey
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projects. Wellington, NZ: Victoria University of Wellington/Department
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Day, P. (2004, Sept 29 - Oct 1). Building and sustaining health
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