ITP Techblog

Kia ora koutou ITP members and supporters, I hope you are managing to stay warm and dry in this cold wet wintery period. 

This morning I joined the Engineering Leadership Forum for our bi-monthly CEO's meeting, a group I thoroughly enjoy engaging with. The challenges our Engineering colleagues - Water, Electrical, Civil, Concrete, Roading etc etc - are facing are exactly the same as our own - workforce pressures, skills shortage generally and skills heading offshore, wage inflation, wellbeing of our people, project demands - eg: 3 Waters and other large infrastructure projects placing additional pressure on the workforce. And like us all engineering disciplines are competing for resources and capability on a global scale. 
This meeting we also discussed at length the role of Engineering in solving Climate Challenges, something we (the digital technology industry) are in our infancy on thinking wise, it seems we do need to focus on developing an industry roadmap for Net Carbon Zero with urgency. I can see there is a great deal we can learn from our Engineering colleagues here.
 
Todays roundup of ITP News is a brief one. Watch this space for more insight in the coming weeks. Take care everyone. Mā te wā (see you later) Vic 

New Podcast, Survey and Webinars coming this month

Podcast - taking on a great deal of feedback and suggestions we have decided to start a Podcast series under the umbrella of “You can’t be what you can’t see”, shining a light on a diverse range of people, roles and capabilities across our fabulous industry. 

Survey - later this week we will release the first of a new comprehensive survey series asking everyone who works in the digital technology - “How do we feel?” Gauging the attitudes, aspirations and importance of specific issues for the digital technology workforce. This will be a series of fortnightly surveys,  the topics will be asking your views on things like where you work, skills and training, education, our current jobs and sentiments on employment conditions, new technologies, maturing the industry and much more. Results for each survey will be published as we go and a final report will be developed in January 2023. 

Webinars - we are starting a new 101 Webinar series, starting with Data Governance and Data Stewardship 101 later in August. We have also arranged for the Deputy Government Chief Digital Officer (GCDO) Anne-Marie Cavanagh to speak soon on the Digital Strategy for Aotearoa and the Strategy for Digital Public Service.

Fragments of the Real Me: National Identity in New Zealand

Chapter 11 of From Yesterday to Tomorrow by Richard Williams the CIO of Massey University and takes us through the history of identity services in Aotearoa New Zealand, the formation of the government vision for a one-stop-shop electronic identity verification service back in 2010, policy and legislation through the decades, plus various oversight mechanisms we have all long since forgotten. As the title suggests this chapter also gives us a great insight in the history of the frequently criticised government identity service RealMe. 

The interesting thing for me in recounting this history was the reminder of how many stalled attempts we have been to progress the digital transformation agenda in government. A series of telling comments like “yet again this work stream is yet ‘to be started.’” and “‘enabling the development of new approaches to digital identity’ was waiting ‘to be started’” and “over a year after the COVID pandemic struck this programme work stream remains yet to be started.” and most damningly “has consistently failed to deliver integrated client services” paint a frustrating picture. To quote Richard's conclusion:

“The 2019 digital strategy and associated programme are intended to promote a modern, agile, adaptive public service, however, in the 18 months since the digital strategy was published the programme had not started key governance or architecture parts of the programme, nor the development of new approaches to digital identity that could have been used to integrate with the COVID tracking service.“

Hi Tech Awards

Congratulations again to all of the finalists and the winners of the 2022 Hi Tech Awards. It was a spectacular night out. My son gave me tickets to The Feelers for my birthday but I had to miss their gig so it was an awesome additional surprise the entertainment was ..... The Feelers. 

Flying Kiwi Ian McCrae - it was fantastic to see Ian awarded the Flying Kiwi award, his contribution to the economy has been outstanding as we all know. Ian had a shout out to Paul Matthews and Nikki Kaye in his speech thanking them for their efforts to include Digital Technologies into the school curriculum. He also told us that he’d just had the all clear from his oncologist, awesome news, congratulations. 

Finally, I've mentioned before how tired we all are. 2.5 years of Covid lockdowns followed by frantic catchup activity, skills shortages, illness and a wave of other demands. As winter is biting I am hearing more and more often how burnt out people are feeling, how overwhelmed, tired and frustrated they are. I wish I had a one size fits all solution to this challenge but don't. Here are a couple of quick tips for these challenging times:

• remember to take time out for yourself, away from work demands, switch off from work
• exercise often - a walk, run or swim, quiet yoga or go to the gym (I know it's hard when it's wet and cold)
• talk to someone, a friend, whānau or colleague, your manager or HR department
• if you are feeling really stressed, not coping or burnt out - utilise your workplace EAP service or call your GP
• consider taking some time off, some employers will provide stress or special leave or you can always take leave without pay if you have no annual leave left

Please check in with your friends and whānau - see if they need your support.  Take care out there. Hei konei rā (Goodbye) Vic