The New Zealand survey was led by Dr Jocelyn Cranefield from Victoria University's School of Information Management and is part of The World IT project - an in-depth study of IT professionals across 37 countries. An IT employee is defined as someone who works with IT for at least 50% of their time. For the purposes of the survey the respondents also worked for an organisation with 10 or more IT employees.

"There are accounts of increasing levels of stress in the IT industry. However, our survey shows that New Zealand IT workers appear to be fairly well satisfied with their roles overall, and feel a sense of accomplishment without excessive concern about work pressure, workload, work-life balance, or losing their jobs," says Cranefield.

Satisfaction was higher for people working in educational institutions, and lower for those working in government or public sector organisations. In addition, employees in "high IT maturity" organisations were also happier and more likely to stay at their organisation for long periods of time, says Cranefield.

"A mature IT organisation is one that has good systems, follows consistent practices and is productive in its delivery of outcomes. So this isn't surprising, but it is a case for why organisations should invest in IT maturity-to attract and retain staff."

Dr Mary Ellen Gordon, who led the data analysis, says that 45% of survey respondents were born outside of New Zealand. Respondents who were born in New Zealand and the United Kingdom indicated they were least concerned about their jobs being eliminated or outsourced, she says.

"On average, respondents reported feeling moderate work pressure. Those born in South Africa agreed that they felt busy or pressured, whereas those born in India or the Philippines stated that they didn't feel drained or tired from work," says Dr Gordon.

"Those from India, in particular, appear to be bringing with them a greater sense of urgency, perhaps developed through exposure to India's much larger, more competitive, IT industry. They are also disproportionately young and well-educated: suggesting that their influence will only grow as more of them are promoted into managerial positions."

In the introduction on its website, the World IT Project notes that consideration of different cultural, economic, societal and religious beliefs, and political systems is an important aspect of its wide-ranging study into the issues confronting IT employees.

"Much of the research in information systems and information technology (IS/IT) has been dominated by a U.S-centric or a Western-centric view. Research paradigms and models developed for the U.S. and Western Europe are just that; they are applicable primarily to the western context. Unsuspecting researchers have taken the same models and applied them to other nations, e.g., underdeveloped countries, emerging economies, transitional economies, and middle-eastern countries. The results have been mid-guided and spurious in many cases."

The project will conclude in 2019, with data collection for the project completed at the end of 2017. To date the project has more than 11,000 observations from 37 countries which will form the basis of 20 journal papers, more than 40 conference papers and a couple of books. 

And, with apologies to the original Kiwi Landing Pad based in San Francisco which helps New Zealand companies gain a toehold in the US market, I raised the idea of transposing this concept for skilled migrants.

I called it the Wellington-based Kiwi Landing Pad for skilled migrants.

While it has been widely reported that there is an ICT skill shortage, and New Zealand promotes itself overseas as an attractive proposition; when they land up in the country, several skilled migrants and international students find it difficult to break into the local Wellington job market.

Many end up performing low level unskilled jobs, a few return back home to their country. Even those who are successful in finding a role and have been in the work force for several years, they are often performing at a level much below their skills and experience for a prolonged period.

On the one hand this has a financial and mental wellbeing impact on the individual and their families; on the other hand, the industry, and New Zealand suffers because of having a skilled, but un-productive workforce.

As I said in this interview with Stuff, it will be like a bootcamp, set up to help participants gain an understanding of opportunities, the local job market, key players, how the system works, job search strategies, networking, CV prep, interview and so on.

Recently, the Kiwi Landing Pad for skilled migrants became a reality of sorts. Weeks of each other, I ran two such sessions, the first one with support from the Indian High Commission, and the second one, held in conjunction with IT Professionals NZ.

There were many similar themes. An ICT professional. A recent graduate. An overseas student. A skilled migrant. A refugee. Their common question: Can you help me find a job?

In the first session, I approached the Indian High Commission. With minimum fuss and in no time, His Excellency Sanjiv Kohli agreed to host the session and his able Commercial Assistant Mamta Bhatt packaged it and promoted it through their social media channels.

We had eight to ten registrations, and it forced me to create a run-sheet. Came the day, we ran the session, and it became quickly evident that the one-and-a-half hours we had budgeted for was not going to be enough.

Fast forward, I made a chance comment on the lack of diversity and inclusion in an event hosted by the Wellington branch of IT Professionals NZ. I put it out there that should anyone be interested, I had material to run a session for new, skilled migrants.

Paul Heath and Kay Jones clearly saw the need, jumped on it, and an ITP workshop (free for members) was locked and loaded.

Paul Heath worked it so that anyone who attended the full workshop would be entitled to join ITP's popular mentoring programme.

The program nicely complemented the larger programme of work ITP is doing with schools, tertiary education, accreditation of degrees, recognition of overseas qualifications and becoming an effective CIO.

We've chatted with many companies and more and more organisations are giving their staff corporate volunteer days, but they often remain unused. Some of the organisation we've talked to say there is only about a 25% uptake of the volunteering days and we think that's a missed opportunity.

Welcome to The Big Shift Education. We are a collaborative movement of for-profit and social-profit organisations, creating, focusing and  accelerating opportunities for social impact in education in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Our first collaboration is Voluntari.ly,  an organisation that aims to solve that problem once and for all.

There are over 100,000 unused volunteer days in New Zealand corporates,  days that young people could benefit from, by connecting to expert help that exists in business, by meeting people who have been where they are and have made it up the ladder into business or technology roles, or whatever takes their fancy.

Voluntari.ly connects schools with corporate volunteers and short technology course content. The new Digital Technology Curriculum (Hangarau Matihiko) launched in December 2017. Schools are expected to be teaching to the curriculum by 2020. There are training programmes (for teachers) dotted around the country but to truly excite the tamariki and rangatahi with new material, they need expert voices in the room, connecting them with a real-world context.

Enter NZ Inc. Many of our large corporations have volunteer programmes. They want to give back to the communities they work in. The current systems out there that facilitate this, offer mostly unskilled labour opportunities (painting, cleaning beaches etc). As a result, many employees choose not to use their hours, which is a waste of a plentiful resource.

The third side of the triangle is a vast range of digital technology content providers. There is a wealth of programmes out there, most free, that could be used in any situation. Schools lack the technical knowledge to take these and run them without expert assistance.

In order to be a movement, however, we need YOU. We are kicking this all off with a hackfest on the 8th and 9th of December at the Civic Building here in Manukau, Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland).

If you are passionate about extending STEAM opportunities for kids New Zealand wide and you can help, come join us if you don't live in Auckland and want to help, please consider giving us a few dollars if anything, it'll mean we can feed the volunteers at the hackfest!

OMGTech! is one such organisation. We are a non-profit organisation with a five-year track record of working with industry volunteers in schools. We are the first initiative spun out of the Pam Fergusson Charitable Trust and are spearheading Voluntari.ly to be the next.

Voluntari.ly is an innovative marketplace that links the three sides seamlessly, facilitating long-lasting relationships that will create increased engagement and excitement into a burgeoning industry that sorely needs more Kiwis.

Viv Chandra is a volunteer with OMGTech! and occasional/annual Techblog guest poster.

Minister for Finance Grant Robertson has this week provided an update, reporting on the second meeting of the Forum, which consists of himself, Business NZ CEO Kirk Hope and Council of Trade Unions President Richard Wagstaff. A major topic was that old chestnut - technology disruption.

The Forum heard from a McKinsey and NZ Tech, and the Minister summarised the discussion as follows:

"Globally we are seeing a massive growth in technologies that were once considered science fiction - things like robotic surgery, drones, artificial intelligence, cellular agriculture, inductive transfer and autonomous vehicles. All of these technological changes will make us more productive but they are also having significant impacts on the way we work," Grant Robertson says.

One sector that is grappling with the changes is manufacturing. With the term 'Industry 4.0' all the rage in the tech sector this year. Here's the Wikipedia definition, which is as good as any:

Industry 4.0 is a name given to the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things, cloud computing and cognitive computing. Industry 4.0 is commonly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution.

Industry 4.0 fosters what has been called a "smart factory". Within modular structured smart factories, cyber-physical systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make decentralised decisions. Over the Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems communicate and cooperate with each other and with humans in real-time both internally and across organizational services offered and used by participants of the value chain.

The term 'Industry 4.0' isn't referenced in Robertson's press release, but it does note that Forum has confirmed $250,000 of funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment towards supporting a Skills Shift in Manufacturing Initiative created and led by the NZ Manufacturers Network.

"A key element of adapting to this change is ensuring that we have the right skills for the future. We need to understand what measures will need to be taken to prevent technological unemployment and the aggravations of serious skills shortages in key industries such as manufacturing," says Wagstaff.

For those unfamiliar with the NZ Manufacturers Network it has, according to its website, been around for 137 years and was previously the NZ Manufacturers and Exporters Association. The first article in its latest newsletter is "Industry 4.0 as an Extension of lean - a local example from Germany", and is a report from the Chief Executive Dieter Adam on its equivalent organisation, called HTT, in Hannover. He notes that by looking at the workshops held by HTT in the past four years there is an "ever closer integration of Lean and Industry 4.0 topics."

"Just as we've come to realise in New Zealand, the group (HTT) sees and treats digital manufacturing technologies simply as 'a next step' in 'making the boat go faster'."

The 108-page Research, Science and Innovation System Performance Report is the second in what is intended to be a regular series that began in 2016. It provides a number of interesting graphs that show where the R&D spend is occurring and benchmarks New Zealand's progress against small advanced economies, OECD and Australia.

While the focus of R&D spend is changing slowly, the graph below shows that Manufacturing and Primary Industry are still the largest sectors to benefit (the percentages in brackets show changes in value since 2014).

This is also reflected in the composition of research papers that are produced, with the least amount in areas such as computer science, mathematics and engineering.

Meanwhile the proportion of male to female researchers to shows that the former continues to dominate in areas such as mathematics, physics and engineering & technology.

Only 20% of New Zealand graduates studied STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects, and when comparing New Zealand's performance against other similar countries, we appear to be running in the mid to low-end of the pack.

When it comes to business expenditure on R&D (BERD), New Zealand is at the bottom when compared to other small advanced economies, with just 0.63% spent on BERD as a percentage of GDP. As a result, the proportion of New Zealand firms reporting innovation is 49%, compared to top ranking Switzerland at 75%. BERD is increasing, however, with the report noting that BERD increased by $356m (29%) between 2014 -2016.

The report notes however that New Zealand's economic productivity "continues to lag its peers."

"According to the OECD and the Treasury, low R&D investment and innovation rates appear to be important factors behind New Zealand's low economic productivity. Strong business R&D investment coupled with a developing start-up ecosystem suggests system-change in this area. Increased business R&D was driven by higher average investment per firm in computer services and manufacturing."

Which is illustrated in the following graph that measures productivity by comparing New Zealand's GDP per hour worked against similar countries. (If you are wondering about Ireland, the report notes that its spike "reflects financial restructuring of multinational companies to take advantage of tax rules.")

Future growth may lie partly in the start-up community, and the report notes that start-up investment has quadrupled over ten years - from $21 million in 2006 to $87 million in 2016. It quotes the Start-Up Genome Ecosystem Report, which claims start-up activity here is gaining in momentum but currently lags behind similar countries and is characterised as being in the "activation phase". 

You can check out the full report here.

It was good for email and text messages and voice calls but that was it.

Or you could have a Blackberry which was good for email and text messages and voice calls but again that was it.

Basically, they were work devices with little appeal outside the corporate environment.

This was just as well because they were mighty costly to buy and even more expensive to run.

Enter the iPhone and everything changed.

One big button on the front, one huge screen and that was about it. You could buy apps, you could install music, you could watch video. Forget buttons, a clean screen was where it was at.

And so we have stayed since then and while we've seen huge growth in the number of units world-wide, and a huge growth in the size and capability of the devices, that basic model has stuck.

Today, Nokia is a novelty item and BlackBerry may as well not exist at all. If it's not Apple, with around 50% market share, it's a device running Google Android, also with around 50% market share.

What is evident is that network operators are also on a hiding to nothing.

They're expected to buy spectrum rights, build a network and offer faster connection speeds for … less money than they currently charge!

It's an entertaining model for sure but that's what they do and long may it continue.

I now pay about $70 a month for a service that offers unlimited local calls, unlimited mobile calls, unlimited text messages and a fair swag of data to boot. I don't think about my usage, I just make calls.

A decade ago I was paying the same and checking my balance like a student every time I used my device. It was ghastly.

The telco market has changed out of all recognition since Apple launched the iPhone and it's going to change some more, but I wonder if it's ready for it.

Ten years from now I suspect the customer won't have a clue whose network they're connected to. They won't know or really care - so long as it functions, it's all good.

This week's announcement from Apple about the launch of eSIM cards is the start of the end for the telcos. Once we're used to having an electronic or virtual SIM card, an app will appear in the store that lets us migrate our phone from one provider to another on a whim. Wake up and your phone may tell you "I see you're off to London today on the direct flight so I'll port you to PomTel for the day, and then when you come back we'll see which offers the best price" or similar. Or you could chose to always have the best quality network. Or the one with the best data price. It's up to you.

Of course, the telco number portability process won't cope with such agility, but that's not the user's problem. No no, far from it.

Apple has already driven a wedge between customer and telco. In the old days you were a network's customer and happened to use a device from Alcatel or Ericsson or Nokia or whomever. You could swap devices as easily as you could underwear, but swapping networks was hard. Today you're an Apple customer or an Android customer and swapping networks is simple but swapping operating systems is hard.

The telcos that survive are the ones that jettison their marketing departments, their fluffiness, their consumer-friendly content marketing schemes and who move swiftly to becoming a quality network operator. The telco of the future is a commodity and is a dumb pipe and for the consumer, that's a good thing.

Techblog - Apple launch snooze fest oh hello, what's this?

Techblog - Broadband now seen as essential service: UN

Techblog - Telcos mark Te wiki o te reo Māori

Reseller News - Why the new iPhone XS series may struggle in NZ

CIO - Vodafone upgrades rural internet connections for Pāmu

RNZ - Mark Pesce review the new iPhone

Gizmodo - Apple's Totally Being A Jerk About The Dongle

Disruption

It comes for us all and while the telco sector is still feeling it, as is the media, disruption is bound for other sectors too.

Fonterra could, I feel, benefit from a bit of disruption. If they'd like to employ me as CEO with a remit of "not losing $200 million in a year" I feel I could give it a serious go for roughly half of what the current chap is on. Cheap at half the price I say!

But of course the next CEO won't only have to deal with restructuring the 6000 staff who earn more than $100,000 a year (not to mention the 24 who earn more than a million) but also the move to artificial protein that is about to come down the pike towards Fonterra's bottom line. Why buy in milk powder when you can build your own?

But let's not be too smug, you bankers, with your billion dollar profits and your closing of the local branches. Sure, you make sure everyone's dosh is secured safely, and our houses are all mortgaged up the wazoo, but what are you going to do when my kids arrive at your door asking for a mortgage but don't have a single income model for you to assess? How will you cope with a client base that has half a dozen part time roles, owns a company and is invested in a lifestyle that is alien to your actuary tables?

And that's before we all move our accounts online and decide not to bother with a bank at all, but rather some kind of online service that lets us get a loan from a provider in Uzbekistan, which is delighted to offer us money at a low rate, and put our savings in a bank in Bermuda that offers a great return.

And while we're pointing at the banks and their impending disruption, what about politicians? Do I really need to chose a geographically-bound representative who doesn't have a clue how the internet works, thinks breaking encryption is a boffo good idea and who hasn't even met me to be my representative in a parliament of like-minded folk? Can I not join another club? I'd rather influence the UK or US elections frankly, and on top of that, I've got no idea how you're going to raise taxes when I "reside" wherever I want and work in just as many jurisdictions.

As the digital world becomes more important than the physical world - as we move to a model where we buy goods in from other countries, have laws thrust upon us by providers of services and generally lose our ability to influence the world via our laws, do we really need politicians who can only rattle their sables and mutter "now see here" instead of leaders who can deliver on a promise?

If only there were someone in government who could talk about these issues and their potential impact on the country, on the economy, on our society and on our culture.

If only, eh?

Stuff - Derek Handley was offered CTO job before it was put on hold, says source

NZ Herald -Juha Saarinen: Does the government want a techie CTO or not?

Pōhēhē

Māori language week is upon us and this year it's been bigger than I can recall it ever being.

In years gone by it's been something of a quiet affair, but this year we've got newspapers finally using macrons, mastheads changing to Māori versions, we've got petrol companies telling us how to order coffee in te reo, and we've got apps, like Spark's Kupu offering, which lets you point your phone at an object and get the Māori word for it.

It's exciting to see because language really is the heart of culture and having grown up in a culture that had saved its language (Welsh) I'm delighted to see another culture having a crack at keeping it real.

This is the future we were promised, or at least the future hinted at in James Burke's Connections TV series (for those of you as old and as English as I am). In the future, he opined, we'd either settle on a culture we all shared, where a hotel in Bangalore is pretty much the same as a hotel in Los Angeles or Auckland or London or Karachi, or we'd build our own cultures and ensure they stand the test of time. I'd like to think we can take all the upside of being so remote from the world and put it to work in the digital space as Kiwis and stand apart from the homogeneity we see around us.

The Americans might have tried to colonise our subconscious, but with some effort we can reclaim it and go our own way. And that's as good for our economic future as anything I've come across.

Kia kaha.

Stuff - The words in te reo Māori that English doesn't have

Stuff - Māori Language Week 2018: Shortage of Māori language teachers 'only going to get worse'

Newshub - Kupu: the app you need this Māori language week

Stuff - English, te reo Māori, and the world-wide threat of 'digital extinction'

NZ Herald - Where to learn te reo Māori

RNZ - Māori Language Week

In the recent past there is a drive by tertiary education providers in New Zealand to incorporate teaching and learning approaches that engage students and enhance their learning experience. Tertiary education providers are currently defining their own teaching and learning directions. 

The Comprehensive Learning approach

The Comprehensive Learning (CL) approach aims to promote active, authentic, flexible and scenario-based learning, incorporating the principles of my work place - Wintec's Ako: Teaching and Learning Directions 2017-2020 (Wintec, 2017).  The objective is to provide 'authentic learning', i.e. "a wide variety of educational techniques that enable students to relate to, and probably solve real life problems", as defined in the Glossary of Education Reform (Great Schools Partnership, 2013). 

Learner centred approaches to education found favour with educationists many decades before the current hype and usage of Information Technology (IT) tools.  We took this approach as it enables students to reflect on their learning while also giving them control over what they learn. It encourages collaboration and group learning, preparing them to be work-ready. These principles echo with Wintec's Ako: Teaching and Learning Directions 2017-2020.

Ako, as defined by Pere (1982) in her seminal book, allows for work integration, learning, and flipped classroom approach, besides scenario based approach to learning. This allows the tutor and the student to collectively select a scenario from their combined experience, experiment with it and then be responsible for the results. While this is enacted, the tutor acts as an elder and a guide, who also learns from the process. This method emulates the traditional practice of allowing a student to blossom in the care of an elder, while still retaining the independence of selecting what, when and how to learn a critical life lesson. The learners experience a student centred paradigm to education, which enables authentic and inquiry based learning.

Another important factor that was considered while creating this approach was as a means to reduce, if not eliminate, the motivation of students to have opportunities to plagiarize.

The design of CL approach

To address the requirements of the education directives, four teaching and learning concepts were determined as the design tenets of the CL approach:

• Learning by doing it yourself - relevant learning material in the form of activities that students can perform on their own to achieve specific outcomes while also learning through this experience;
• Work-ready - prepare learners to understand and demonstrate the values the employers are looking for in a work environment;
• Flexibility - involve the learners in deciding what they want to develop confirming to the context and applicability.  The use of customizable courseware adds value to students past experience and learning, while enhancing their current knowledge;
• Scenario based learning - encourage learners to use prior knowledge and experience and critical thinking in a risk-free and a close to real-world environment.

As it engages learners on a continuous basis and encourages them to work through the term, it tends to reduce the conditions for students' excessive mental stress as compared to the traditional "single-shot" effort close to assessments' deadlines, and hence reduces the motivation to plagiarize.  

This approach is currently implemented in some of the IT and Business courses at Wintec. The value in adopting this and the comprehensiveness of the approach will be strengthened through more implementations and wider adoption of the approach in subjects other than those in IT and Business.  

This was first published and presented at CITERNZ 2018. You can read the full paper here.

Sunitha Prabhu is a senior academic staff member at the Centre for Information Technology, Wintec.

iSANZ's goal is to "inspire, promote and reflect" on New Zealand's information security people and its industry, and to "formally recognise the achievements of outstanding New Zealand InfoSec professionals" and companies.

Now in its fourth year, categories include best start-up, best security awareness campaign, best project and best up-and-coming security star.

iSANZ Chair Kendra Ross says the diversity seen in the Award entries each year show that New Zealand has high achieving and dedicated InfoSec people the equal of anywhere in the world, according to its website.

"There is extraordinary leadership and growth happening in New Zealand information security. We urge businesses, industry and individuals to enter this year's Awards to showcase the depth and breadth of their work, skills and talent," says Kendra.

Past winners include CERT NZ for security project, Aura Information Security (best security company in 2017), and Laura Bell of Safestack for best international superstar.

This year's judges include a who's who of the infosec sector: Russell Craig from Microsoft; Ryan Ko, Head of Cyber Security Lab & Associate Professor, University of Waikato; Peter Gutmann, Computer Scientist and member of the iSANZ Hall of Fame; Adrian van Hest, Partner and National Cyber Practice Lead at PwC; Jo Healey, NZ Global Technology Services Leader at IBM; Catherine Soper, Government Relations Manager at Vodafone NZ; Tom Maasland, Partner at MinterEllisonRuddWatts; Debbie Monahan, Former Domain Name Commissioner, now independent contractor and InternetNZ's Chief Executive, Jordan Carter.

Entry packs are available from the iSANZ website.

"Yes I did question whether Māori should participate in IT. I used this question to demonstrate that as a critical researcher, I believe that we should not be taking anything for granted. I would like to explore the question to not only establish if Māori should participate in IT, but if so, to what extent and in what areas. I would also like to incorporate aspects of New Zealand's history - as I did in the presentation - to see what we can learn from our past.

"I drew from a number of different sources in my presentation including Hazel Petrie's "Chiefs of Industry", and Michael King's "The Penguin History of New Zealand". In Petrie's book, she spoke of the economic prosperous period or "golden age" for Māori (1840s and 1850s). This was a period when Māori were encouraged to invest heavily in new technologies (in this instance ships and flourmills) as a means of increasing their economic prosperity. This time of prosperity ended abruptly after the international produce market crash in 1856. With diversification discouraged, unequal access to government assistance, a lack of political influence as Māori became unwilling to sell land, and discrimination in the "…allocation of income generated by Māori to benefit Pākehā…" the Māori economy went downhill rapidly (Petrie, 2006, p. 253).

"This decline continued after the First World War when equality earned on the battlefield did not travel home with the soldiers, and legislation excluding Māori from housing and farm development continued (King, 2003). Post Second World War saw urbanisation of Māori turn from a trickle into a torrent as vast swathes of land were lost through government purchase, the actions of the Native Land Court, and raupatu after the wars.

"Many Māori were also attracted from the North Island to the South Island with paid transportation and lodgings. Due to the abundance of work and the casual nature of their employment, Māori would work their way up the South Island to return home with accumulated wages. This happened repetitively over a number of years and what was initially a mobile labour force led to permanent migration of families away from their iwi. When I spoke of geographical disconnection, this happened rapidly within a generation with contributing factors including urbanisation, migration and an overwhelming push in some political circles for assimilation. 

"The reason I used this example was to highlight one possible danger of increased involvement of Māori in IT.  The IT industry is global and those within that industry have the potential to make a good living.  It was acknowledged by a number of the ITx2018 keynote speakers that anywhere from 75-85% of jobs that we do today will no longer be needed in the next 25 years. To succeed in the IT industry, participants need to be constantly learning new things and upgrading their current skills sets (which includes out-of-work time learning).  With this kind of volatile market and a job that requires continual immersion to succeed, should we be encouraging an already fragmented Māori population into jobs that encourage further geographical dispersion and one that requires complete emersion to succeed?  The possibility for current levels of geographical disconnection to be amplified through global migration should at least be a consideration when planning for the future.

"As an aside, I had the opportunity to speak with a few people that listened to my presentation, and one lady mentioned that she is an IT worker, and working in IT has allowed her to reconnect with her family because she is able to work remotely from her home. Talking to her was a real pleasure and highlighted to me what was possible if the goal of those working in IT was to either reconnect or stay connected.  Those opportunities are not always available, however, but maybe this is an area of opportunity for iwi to consider; creating a specific strategic ICT plan for those in IT so they have the opportunity to reconnect or stay connected with their respective iwi. If this can be done then maybe this example highlights reasons why and how we can go about encouraging more Māori into IT."

On the flipside - what do you think are the benefits of increasing Māori participation in IT?

"A number of industry and broader economic benefits have already been identified for Māori IT workers, for example:

• Diversification of the IT industry to promote novel answers to existing problems.
• As technology becomes more advanced e.g. artificial intelligence (AI), incorporating cultures that not only think differently, but where ethics and ethical concerns are embedded in their culture will help in the creations of different technological cultures (e.g. AI culture) whose aim to be of benefit to all; not just a few.
• Advantageous for the New Zealand economy as it increases the number of skilled workers available for existing jobs (decreased unemployment), increases the average wage (tax revenue and increases in disposable spending) and decreases our reliance on immigration to maintain and grow the industry.

"For Māori IT workers, apart from financial benefits, it is currently more difficult to say.  While being part of a growing industry could be advantageous, if as a group Māori are unable to influence change, then as a group they are subject to the changes implemented by others. Therefore what is my opinion on the benefits of increased Māori participation in IT?

"If Māori look to act as a cohesive group and become more involved in the creation of IT artefacts, this could prove advantageous as there may be scope to be able to influence the direction of change. That will require strategic changes to be made; not only in how iwi manage their ICT capabilities, but also a focus on both the entry levels and the strategic and governance levels of the IT industry. This also includes a strategic plan (as opposed to ad-hocery) to enable those with ideas about revitalising te reo to be paired with Māori developers so that the embedded culture and values within the final products align with the overall design vision."

To learn more about Mark Van der klei's research check out the Techblog post or you can email mark.vanderklei@canterbury.ac.nz.

I followed up with him later to learn more about the research and how ITP members might be able to assist. Van der klei is keen to interview Māori and Non-Māori working in IT occupations for his research, which he says examines IT occupations through an indigenous lens.

"This research is the first that I am aware of that combines the two perspectives and actively examines IT occupations through an indigenous critical lens. Specifically using a frame of reference that views groups with lower involvement in IT as not underachievers but as groups who do not find the occupation attractive (for whatever reasons that may be). 

"As a means of offering some form of baseline, research identified from the US places this issue in a global context. Their findings included:

• The IT workforce are not one homogenous group but rather a diverse collection of people employed in IT occupations
• IT personnel have a distinct occupational culture
• Those differences are the cause of inter-organisational conflict
• This distinct occupational culture makes it difficult for newcomers to enter the IT workforce
• This culture makes it difficult for both women and ethnic minorities to fit in. It also influences their commitment to the occupation in terms of both longevity and progress.

"Further to this, the lens that I am using to view this situation uses a combination of 'Why' and 'How' questions: 'Why do we think that (critical thought)', and 'How do know something is true (epistemology)'?

"Critical thought is just that, thinking about things critically. In particular it is about power or authority, and responsibility. In this area, a critical question may include: "Is it reasonable for someone to be responsible for something if they have neither the power nor authority to influence change?"  

"An example of this (regarding Māori in IT) would be that although I have found examples of initiatives which seek to encourage Māori to participate and access IT or ICT (for example the Ka Hao Fund, a $30m fund set up by the National Government and tasked with 'creating high value jobs and opportunities that advance Māori in the digital technology sector'), I have not found any initiatives of the same scale which seek to make IT or ICT more attractive to Māori," he says.

"There may be initiatives on the same scale - and I would certainly appreciate it if someone could let me know - but as of yet I am not aware of any. If the Ka Hao Fund is responsible for encouraging Māori participation and usage, can they be held responsible if long term objectives are not met due to obstacles inherent in the culture of the IT industry (as international research studying minority groups in IT would suggest)?"

Van der klei says the second part of concerns epistemology, or 'how do we know what we know is true?'.

"An example of this would be the way in which the Māori ICT report (2015) was interpreted by the New Zealand Government at the time. While the report itself was neutral in its analysis and reporting of Māori involvement in ICT, the government's response points to a different interpretation. The Ka Hao Fund targets Māori and was created to increase Māori participate and usage of IT or ICT.  If the number of Māori in the IT industry is low, and the fund was created to encourage Māori to participate and advance, then the base assumption appears to be that Māori are underachieving. If research is telling us that this is an international problem and that there is very little difference between statistics in New Zealand and those found overseas, then is this a Māori problem or an industry problem?"

For his PhD thesis Van der Klei would like to talk to as many Māori IT workers as is possible. "This is because this research is exploratory and I have chosen an inductive methodology. With inductive research I have areas of interest rather than research questions."

He is also keen to speak with 2-5 non-Māori at either IT Manager or CIO levels. He says that when he worked as an IT Administrator with a Pākehā manager the culture within the team reflected to Māori workplace values he has read about in academic research.

"This includes values such as manākitanga (kindness, respect and reciprocity), whakawhanaungatanga (building relationships), auahatanga (objectively looking at things in search of new and creative solutions), and Wairuatanga (interconnectedness, life balance).  In a team of 6, this approach resulted in a group that contradicted many of the findings associated with IT teams in research coming out of the US.  Our team was diverse (two Māori males, two NZ Pākehā females, and two NZ Pākehā males); our culture resonated with many of the other business units; we worked closely with other business units resulting in organisational respect and cohesion as opposed to conflict; and we had a stable team with very little turnover," he says.

"I am not sure if these benefits are a roll-on effect from a dominant organisational culture or specific to that team (or after a few years I have firmly adorned rose-coloured glasses) but I would like to speak with non-Māori managers of diverse team to see what they have in common."

If you would like to participate in the research, please contact Mark at mark.vanderklei@canterbury.ac.nz.

On Thursday, Techblog will continue the discussion with Mark, posing the question "Is it beneficial to Māori to participate in IT?"

According to a statement  by Education Minister Chris Hipkins and Associate Education Minister Tracey Martin, the money will come from "Crown baselines" and doesn't require any new appropriation. "The funding has been reprioritised from underspends in the Tertiary Education Vote in the 2017/18 years."

Martin points out this is part of the commitment made in the Labour and New Zealand Coalition Agreement to restore funding for computers in homes programmes in this parliamentary term.

Lawrence Millar from the 20/20 Trust, which runs the Computers In Homes programme has welcomed the new fund and says "it is the first step by the Coalition Government to address digital exclusion." The organisation had been previously disappointed when there was no provision for funding made in the Budget in May.

"There are still 100,000 school-aged children without internet access at home, and they continue to be a priority group for investment. Their exclusion drives a wedge into New Zealand society, affecting education, employability and social inclusion for generations," Millar says.

As previously noted in Techblog, students are able to access fast, reliable, safe, uncapped internet during school hours following the Network for Learning rollout that occurred as part of the Ultra Fast Broadband initiative. But after school many students don't have access to a reliable internet connection to do their homework, study and just enjoy the benefits of being connected.

Technology entrepreneur Derek Handley raised the issue in a speech during TechWeek. He said New Zealand will fail to become a leading digital nation if it doesn't address the number of children without internet access in their homes. In the speech he noted that these students are often reliant on the local library for internet access.

"Many of them (students) use cheap Android phones without data plans, to connect to WiFi - to search, type up essays and assignments, on their tiny screens," he says. "Many of the homes they go back to might have only a handful of books. In their homes, they are barely connected to the present - let alone the future."

InternetNZ has called for a target for New Zealand for Universal Access, and in its Solving the Digital Divides Together  report it claims that internet access is a basic service. "We believe that Internet access will shortly become a core necessity (similar to housing, sustenance, clothing medical care and necessary social services) to stay a connected member of society. If we are to continue to grow as a country we all need access to the internet and the ability to use it."

Meanwhile the 20/20 Trust, which has been drawing on its reserves since its funding was stopped in June 2017, will be looking at ways it can "align our operations to match the expectations of the government," says Millar.

"The Government has recognised digital inclusion as a priority and has set an aspirational goal to close digital divides by the year 2020. More than 19,000 families have gained digital access and skills since 2001 as a result of participation in 20/20 Trust programmes, and the Trust is widely recognised as a significant contributor to digital inclusion in New Zealand."

To celebrate, we held the 'official' launch with Michelle Dickinson (aka Nanogirl) who is the challenge champion. She began the day talking about Tahi Rua Toru tech on the TVNZ Breakfast programme, before heading along to the NZ Education Technology Summit in Auckland. Along with eight students she demonstrated an activity from CS Unplugged which illustrates compression and the transfer of data.

The activity was designed to show that you don't need a computer to teach computational thinking. But as it took the students some time to "transmit" the information, everyone decided at the end of the exercise that a computer was probably a very good thing to have on hand.

123Tech is about getting students to create solutions for real-world problems with digital technology and helping to ensure that all New Zealand children are equipped with an understanding of how digital technologies work, how computers "think" and how digital technologies are designed. This is essential in preparing them for the workforce in the 21^st century.

It is also designed to attract students who don't typically enter technology careers, and so is especially effective for students who have no programming or digital development skills.

123Tech already has hundreds of schools participating around the country and the students are coming up with some awesome solutions for problems they have identified, which include:

• Websites designed to help kids identify and deal with mental health issues,
• An app being developed by primary-school students to help new entrants learn about school before they arrive,
• A website that shows you where to go for environmentally friendly products,
• Phone card service designed for homeless people to enable them to make local calls from prepaid cell phones to essential services such as the Ministry of Housing, Ministry of Social Development, and Work and income.

It's important to note that while undertaking the challenge, students are learning about and strengthening their skills in the areas of research, teamwork, written communication, design and development.

Diversity is an important aspect of the 123Tech - whether it is skillset, gender, ethnicity, or geographical region. Strong engagement with Māori learners is a key metric for success, and to meet this requirement, Tahi Rua Toru Tech is available to all Kura with resources available in Te Reo.  The challenge aims to be true to the principles of Kaupapa Māori.

123Tech is run with the IT industry through IT Professionals NZ and the Royal Society Te Aparangi. Educators who encourage and facilitate students entering the competition gain access to a range of material and a network of educators and tech mentors familiar with Digital Technologies/Hangarau Matihiko who can provide guidance and support.

You can find out more at 123tech.nz, and if you are going to ITx next week be sure to check out the demonstration on Friday 13 July.

It comes courtesy of data insights and research firm Infometrics, whose Chief Forecaster Gareth Kiernan spoke at the Industry Training Federation Conference in Wellington this week. His Megatrends presentation showed that the jobs most at risk were likely to be in the lower skilled areas, and that jobs in the provinces would be harder to replace than those in the cities, particularly Auckland.

But is all this talk about technology replacing humans in jobs bit exaggerated? For example, aren't a lot of jobs being taken up by robots because people don't want to do them?

According to an article this week in the Wall Street Journal, the US is experiencing the lowest employment rate for restaurant workers on record, and it's getting harder find staff willing to do jobs like flipping burgers and cleaning dirty grills.

To combat this, CaliBurger has invested in "Flippy", a robot that turns burgers and cleans hot greasy grills. It costs US$100,000 a robot and, despite being a little overwhelmed when it was first introduced earlier this year, Flippy is proving so successful that it will be installed in 10 outlets by the end of the year. (Flippy's novelty factor attracted so many customers when it was first installed that it couldn't handle the demand).

Meanwhile Dunkin Donuts told the WSJ that because the labour market is so tight, new staff are walking out within a month of being hired. The company conducted focus groups with former employees to find out what the most boring tasks were and then worked out a way to automate them. Apparently grinding and weighing coffee was near the top of the list, so now they use "digital refactometers" in some stores to determine the right consistency of coffee grain.

The AI Forum pointed out in its report earlier this year: "The loss of a million jobs over the next 20 to 40 years to AI does not appear to present an enormous labour market challenge. The New Zealand economy is continually creating new jobs and eliminating jobs that are no longer required." For example, in 1966 there were 21,000 New Zealanders employed as typists and stenographers and "almost all of these jobs no longer exist, however this didn't result in mass unemployment of 21,000."

When I put it to Gareth Kiernan that robots are doing the work that people don't want to do, and that historically people have found new jobs when the old ones disappear, he said it is the pace of change that can leave people behind. His history lesson came in the form of the economic reforms of the 1980s.

"The reforms were done very rapidly, with little thought given to the transition costs and, partly as a result, we saw unemployment climb to over 11% during the early 1990s. Even more importantly, there was a relatively large number of long-term unemployed (more than six months) that persisted in the economy through until the early 2000s, meaning that there was a significant pool of people who weren't contributing to the economy - arguably because they were given little or no assistance to retrain as jobs that had previously been protected or subsidised were lost."

He also notes that jobs that are lost in New Zealand might not be replaced in this country. It's difficult to predict the sectors where the new jobs will "spring up", although obvious areas are design, manufacturing and programming of machinery.

"There's certainly potential in design and programming, but manufacturing is not New Zealand's forte, and is much more likely to happen in China etc," he says.

"So, we do need to be a little cautious about the international distribution of jobs and whether, as many jobs are created in New Zealand to replace those that are automated in the near term." 

Students at Tino e Tasi Preschool's two schools, in Dunedin and Christchurch, have created two Samoan language iOS games, which have been produced in house with assistance from Kiwa Digital - a development company that specialises in technology to support indigenous languages globally.

The O luga o le Motu app, which names the objects that remind the children of Samoa, was produced in Christchurch. The Tatou ō ile Maketi app is about the things you might find in a Samoan market, and was produced by the Dunedin children.

The children have been key contributors in the project, which was broken down into phases such as brainstorming, design, sound design, development and the launch phase.

At the launch event Zohar Marshall from Tino e Tasi described how some of the children came up with ideas for games. Four-year old Kingston Anapogi created a game about fast cars and held the piece of paper in his hands as if was an iPad and began to steer the car. Three year old Auteletoa Fasi drew blocks of the colour purple on her tablet and the object of her game was to change the purple colour into a new colour by dragging the purple down the screen to change to the colour yellow.

Marshall describes how during a planning phase, one of the children was concerned that there was no sound. So they created a script and took the children to the sound studio. "Our friend Dean Smith, a sound engineer from MediaWorks, helped to record our voices. Even though it was a new experience, our kids were blown away when they listened back to the audio and heard themselves," Marshall says.

The language apps can even be applied offline. "They learnt a simple game that does not need any digital technology. It's played with two players, where someone becomes a computer who needs to follow the instructions of the coder. You draw a 3x3 square grid on the floor. The coder places directional instructions using arrows, so the computer can "run" to the end."

As Marshall points out, "code is a written language which gives instructions to a computer to do something. That's it!"

"Given that digital technology will be integrated into the future of our children, digital literacy is just as important as learning to read and learning maths," says Marshall.

"So let us not wait for our children to reach high school or adults to become digitally literate. Let us teach our tamaiti how to write the programmes that make computers work. Let us teach our tamaiti there is more to a game than just an icon on a table or a game on a screen."

In true start-up style, the children were also involved in pitching for the funding for the apps. Alpha Valavala-Leitch (4yrs at the time), and Misha Luamanuvae-Sua (4yrs at the time) played a crucial role in the pitch to the Ministry for Pacific Peoples' Toloa Community Fund, which aims to increase the number of Pacific people employed in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Pacific Peoples Minister Aupito William Sio visited Tino e Tasi Preschool in Dunedin last week to meet the children who had produced the Tatou ō ile Maketi app. "This is a fantastic example of an innovative tool that helps our children learn to be thinkers in two languages and as they grow up they can become innovators, creators and navigators all the way through their educational years," he says.

The process to develop the apps took around six months, and was officially launched during Samoan Language Week earlier this month.

See what I did there? I'm so very pleased with myself.

It's great to see the EU law around data protection cause such a commotion.

Forget the barrage of "hey, we've updated our T&C" emails you've just received, underneath all the marketing madness you've received a boon: your privacy is now in your hands.

Well, it's in my hands because I'm an EU citizen and you lot, frankly, are colonials. But I digress.

What the EU legislation does is ensure that individuals are in charge of their own data. Should a company collect your data, you're entitled to know what they do with it. Should they lose it, they have to let you know. Should they gather data on you from another source, you can ask to see it. Should they gather data on you and store it in another country, you can again find out where it is.

This puts a huge amount of emphasis on keeping your data safe and given how much data we generate simply by existing online, this is a very good thing indeed.

Because our IT companies have been too cavalier with our data for too long. The number of shocking data breaches has grown rapidly and appallingly and many of them try not to share with the group. "Who, us? Hacked? Pish!" they say, shortly after they threaten to sue the reporters and shortly before they are in turn sued by millions of customers.

New Zealand is not part of the EU and so we have to go our own way. Thankfully we have a very sensible, albeit outdated, law in place currently and the round of submissions on a new bill should strongly support the need for yet more protection for the little fella, and that's not a bad thing.

Because try as we might to get clear of the privacy quagmire, more and more companies are learning about the online world and are gathering our data. It's high time they took good care of it.

Techblog - GDPR: fun for all the family

Techblog - The GDPR and the .nz domain name space

ZDNet - Facebook gets month-long ban in Papua New Guinea

The Register - USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' - says Salesforce supremo Marc Benioff

R&D

We've talked  a lot about New Zealand's woeful Research and Development rates. R&D is in our DNA but sadly not in our GDP and we lag well behind even the average score.

The new government has proposed an R&D tax credit that will help companies pay for R&D but only if they spend a certain amount each year (currently suggested to be $100,000) and only if they conduct certain activities (forget about market position research, or UX development work, they're not covered).

I've been supportive of the move because I see private company R&D as the area where New Zealand has lagged. The government has put its hand deep into its public sector pockets (that's your pocket and mine) but the private sector has hardly bothered to show up.

This credit aims to help address that.

But what it won't do is help start-ups and small business users get into R&D and that, frankly, is a missed opportunity. Worse, the way the tax credit is currently structured, we run the risk of shutting small business and start-up businesses out of the R&D area entirely because the new tax credits are in place of the start-up grants offered by Callaghan Innovation.

The decisions aren't made yet. Nothing is cast in stone. So we still have time to adjust the regime before it's launched and before it runs the risk of driving R&D among start ups and small businesses off a cliff.

Oh and if you want to see how other countries do it, check out the links within Nat Torkington's piece below. The UK offers 100% tax credits - something we might like to consider if we're to do more than just catch up. 

Techblog - Proposed Changes to NZ's R&D Incentives (the story SO GOOD not one, not two but three publications cross posted it)

The Spin Off - 'If you do R&D, we plan to support it': Megan Woods defends the new tax incentive

Newsroom - Budget 2018: $1bn earmarked for R&D

Player one: ready to shop

I am not one of nature's shoppers.

From an early age I learned to sigh and drag my heels and mooch from shop to shop. My mother was so proud.

Lately, shopping without my mother, I'd have my daughters to contend with. While trying on trousers I'd get the curtain RIPPED back and "HERE DAD, TRY THIS SHIRT WITH THE FLOWER ON IT IT'S CHOICE" thrust at me as I hopped around trying not to embarrass myself.

These days I have the internet and while I'm now charged GST (huzzah) on most purchases, the vast bulk of my shopping is done online from the comfort of my own home.

I'm typing this on a new Microsoft curvy keyboard because my old one rattled a lot and was so full of crumbs it had a food value. Now it's all sleek and slim and gorgeous (although not quite the same) and I was doubly happy I didn't need to set foot in a shop: just order it and wait for delivery.

Many things I buy online come from overseas and not least of which is from Amazon which isn't in a rain forest so they should probably change the name.

The new Amazon is in Australia and at first they were all like Yay! and Woohoo! and Choice! and now are all Boo! and Hiss! and That's not cricket! Because the web elves at Amazon now block Australians from shopping on the parent website (Amazon USA) and instead insist they shop on the Amazon Australia site.

Why?

Because Australia now charges GST on goods purchased online and so Amazon is enforcing local shopping on the local site as a way to control this.

We can expect to see that here soon once they work out where New Zealand is and start punting goods to us from the Aussie site.

So expect to pay more for All Black jerseys (this is a joke) and less for hats with corks hanging from them (also a joke) and have access to far fewer items (this is no joke) which can only be good for Alibaba.

The Age - Amazon to block its US website for Aussie shoppers over new GST rules

ZDNet - Amazon to block Aussies from global marketplace

New Zealand's research and development spend is woeful.

Roughly half of the OECD average, we trail dismally behind almost every major country with whom we compare ourselves.

Never mind the leadership of places like Israel which spends around 4% of its GDP on R&D, we don't even make the middle of the pack and it's long been a bone of contention that New Zealand companies don't see the benefit of spending to develop new products and markets.

If we break down the spend we do have into public and private it's relatively easy to see where the problem lies. The public spend is on par with the rest of the world. On our behalf, the government invests a huge amount of money in R&D and choses carefully (some would say laboriously) where to spend the cash.

I've heard of companies that won't bother applying for grants because the process is so onerous that only those with serious capital can fund such a move, making the whole thing worthless in the long run.

But at least we're spending and well done on previous governments for increasing that side of the ledger.

No, where we really fall down is on the private side. New Zealand companies invest less than 1% of GDP in research and development and that's abysmal.

We're supposed to be a nation of innovators, of entrepreneurs, of Number Eight Fencing Wire maniacs who are keen to suck it and see and to try new things.

But apparently we won't spend money on it.

Part of the reason for that is it's much better to spend your money on buying up an old house and doing the bare minimum to make it into a rental property. Tax incentives and other issues being what they are, the market for providing rental accommodation is  growing fast and when you have a small pool of capital as we do here in New Zealand that comes at the expense of other opportunities.

So it's great to see the government step in and put down a tax credit for those who conduct R&D. The 12.5% will surely help encourage some to get into the game and others to step up their efforts because there's no way we're going to grow the economy or survive the demise of the primary sector if we carry on as we have been.

NBR - Businesses asked to comment on 12.5% R&D tax credits

Newsroom - Govt wants tax incentive to boost woeful R&D spend

Interest - New tax regime for R&D

BusinessDesk - NZ government proposes 12.5% R&D tax incentive

Whither the CTO?

How to write about the government's CTO role? A mirth-filled one-act play? A mocking open letter to the minister? A whitepaper outlining the reasons why we need one (or perhaps the reasons why we don't)? Perhaps an interpretive dance.

I'm undecided, but ironically deadline's wait for no man (whoosh) and while we wait for the next phase of the process, whatever that might be, it's time we had a chat about the CTO role.

As you'll remember, this was mooted as a really useful way of focusing all of government onto the single issue of digital disruption and how best to navigate those uncertain waters. Who better than a digital person to show us the dangers, the opportunities and the benefits of the new digital age?

Many people (this writer included) put up their hands. Many people put down their hands and walked away. A short list was drawn up and interviews undertaken. A deadline whooshed past and the D5 summit was held without our new cyber-czar.

It's now late April and we're no closer. The advisory panel that is going to help advise the CTO is still only half populated and until they chose the rest of the panel, the panel won't help chose a CTO and so we struggle on. Rudderless, as it were.

I think the role is possibly in need of a quick rescoping. The cabinet paper that creates the role shows the CTO has no power, no authority and no ability to make change. All the CTO can do is produce a wish list strategy and then hope that things happen appropriately.

Given the types of people who applied and the type of person required to do the job appear to not be overlapping groups, perhaps we shouldn't be looking for a digital leader or a coder or an engineer at all. Perhaps the role isn't actually one for a CTO but is in fact a futurist role.

We need someone who can say "farming is about to be totally devastated by artificial food. Here's the proof and here's the opportunity." We need someone who can go to Estonia and report back on how they manage online elections. We need someone who can harness the disparate groups within New Zealand tech circles and at least point them all in the right direction. We need someone who can talk to government departments about the dangers of doing what they're doing and the opportunity.

Given there is no authority to make anything actually happen, calling the role CTO might be a step too far. This role is about the future and where New Zealand could go. We need a navigator and a champion, rather than an organizer.

NBR - Search for govt CTO 'a right mess' Hudson says

Arise NZRise

Meanwhile, New Zealand tech organisation NZRise has been producing a list of what it sees as critical steps for the government to take in terms of growing the digital components of our economy and society.

Many of the action points focus on government as spending agency. The New Zealand Government is the largest buyer of ICT services in the land and yet tends to spend its money offshore. The big institutional players (IBM, Accenture and so on) get the lion's share of the contracts and NZRise suggests this is bad from two obvious points of view: New Zealand developers miss out on a large contract and the government ends up with a product that doesn't always do quite what it says on the tin.

I have some sympathy with them on this. Having spent tens of thousands of dollars on large-scale systems that turned out to be horribly overblown once they were in place (and then replacing them with hundreds of dollars' worth of cloud services) because of a smooth sales pitch, I'm familiar with the problem. Buying New Zealand made product not only gives local business a growth opportunity it gives the buyer a local body to grab by the shoulders and shake when things go wrong (cough cough Novopay cough).

It's also vitally important we look across all of government to make sure our biggest keeper of personal information and data about New Zealand is doing a robust job of ensuring that data is available for generations to come and won't just disappear with one closed-system upgrade. This has become apparent to me as I've aged disgracefully and my memory has stopped working for many things. I vaguely recall writing something but can't find it online because Computerworld's archive doesn't run back that far (remember everyone: Lotus Notes spelt backwards is SETON) and I am reliably told that NBR once decided the internet was for fools and managed to repurpose the server on which was stored 20-odd years' worth of business reporting, without backing it up first.

That's bad for people like me - narcissists with bad memories - but if it was a government department that would be unacceptable. Yet I wonder at all the PDFs and assorted documents I've seen over the years and wonder just how long they'll remain accessible.

These are issues that should be embedded in our buying decisions and while we are sans-CTO it's up to the operational teams to ensure we create contracts and buy tech services with more than just our own present-day needs in mind.

Techblog - Government aim for ICT to be our second-largest contributor to GDP by 2025 - NZRise recommendation

Techblog - Government commitment to "Open" - NZRise recommendation

"Funding must be apportioned by the end of May and it is unsure when these grants will be available again," says Suzi Finkelstein, Program Director of Women & Leadership New Zealand (WLNZ). 

"This fee support opportunity provides women with funding of between $3,000 and $8,000 to undertake a range of leadership development programs."

Ms Finkelstein said she encourages women working in all aspects of the IT sector right across New Zealand to consider the scholarship program. 

The fee-support opportunity provides access for women to gain access to a range of accredited part-time leadership development programs. The programs are blended (partly online, partly face-to-face) and will commence later in the year. 

WLNZ and Women & Leadership Australia (WLA) has been developing female leaders and supporting the increased presence of women in business and community leadership roles for almost 15 years.

"Based on a simple truth, that women represent an enormously under-utilised resource, we believe that supporting a greater percentage of women to step up into leadership positions enables tremendous cultural and economic benefits," Ms Finkelstein said. This is especially true for what are traditionally 'male-dominated' sectors such as IT. 

WLNZ and WLA offer a range of professional development programs, advisory services, networking channels and on-going research. Since its inaugural forum in 2003, more than 50,000 women have participated, making it the largest gender-focused leadership initiative in the region. A number of public course offerings are regularly available, as are in-house development programs for companies in the public and private sector.  

"With so much experience in supporting women, we are ideally positioned to respond to the ever-changing needs of contemporary female leaders and their organisations," Ms Finkelstein says.

"Each year, employers across all sectors and industries choose to partner with us to develop the skills and confidence of their female leaders and help provide exciting new career opportunities."

WLNZ aims to create experiences 'for women' but not necessarily 'about women'. The programs not only provide best of breed leadership development but immerse participants in an experience informed by the complexities and opportunities of being a female leader in New Zealand today.

Through a deep understanding of the needs of leaders at every stage of their journey, WLNZ creates a rich and empowering learning environment which is singularly geared to enabling each participant and organisations to achieve their own unique vision of success.

WLNZ programs are designed to engage female leaders in highly interactive, peer-oriented development environments. During the programs, activities are undertaken which develop participant connections; allowing cohorts to develop into tightly knit peer networks. The strong group dynamic which exists within the programs is fundamental to their success and greatly enhances the learning process.

Expressions of Interest close on April 27. For more information and to complete an initial Expression of Interest, go to http://www.womenandleadership.co.nz/scholarships or contact Alistair Young on +61 3 9270 9032 or ayoung@wla.edu.au. 

Suzi Finkelstein is the WLNZ Programs Director. To find out more about WLNZ, check out their website, or follow them on Facebook or Twitter. 

The challenge for many people who have embraced the gig engagement model is they are often forced into accepting predatory working practises, compromise their safety and the resulting compensation can equate to less than minimum wage.

How does it work?

In broad terms "gig economy" can refer to both freelancers and gig workers. In both of these instances - instead of / or as well as a permanent job (full or part-time) or instead of holding a long term contract for work - individuals undertake a "job" or "gig" for a fixed fee at a set time. These jobs or gigs can be very short (minutes) or longer (days). A person can be carrying out many jobs or gigs on behalf of different companies on the same day.

Freelance work has existed for a long time, photographers, graphic designers and accountants are often engaged via this model. Engaged to do a set piece of work, for a rate with terms agreed by both parties.

Where the gig model differs is the size, frequency and engagement. Many gigs are offered via a technology platform, can be bid on or for a set price set by the technology firm. The terms are set by the technology company with no ability to negotiate.

So it's the terms of engagement, ability to set rate and duration that differs.

So why so much bad press?

This is a complex issue which boils down to two primary issues facing both individuals and nations - the gig economy often disempowers the worker (exposing opportunities for exploitative employment practices); and has created tax avoidance / tax shifting opportunities for the global players involved.

The media attention is primarily aimed at high profile Silicon Valley unicorns who have built platforms for ride sharing, food delivery, cleaning on demand and so many other services where the work itself is carried out under a gig based engagement model. The general feeling from reports is you cannot make a living as a gig economy worker without working excessive hours.

These businesses are not necessarily paying proportionate taxes in the countries where services are procured which is of increasing concern for nations.

To be clear not everyone fitting that description is behaving badly, I have read great things about TaskRabbit for instance who enable the gig workers to select their own rates (and take a 30% margin) among other friendlier terms.

There are other secondary issues created due to the workers essentially being self employed - vehicle safety, worker safety, insurance, hours worked - to name a few.

Employment practices

Uber, one of the central characters in the gig economy model, have dominated the news recently with examples of worker exploitation. This article "Is Uber an example of innovation, or just another way to pay workers less" provides a great description of Uber's business model:

Uber uses technology to drive down the cost of labor by replacing a regulated, protected class of worker (in this case, taxi drivers) with a non-protected worker (in this case, anyone with a driver's license and decent car)

There are strong parallels with Uber like models and various labour movements of old which led to the industrial revolution. Closer to home in Australia (and New Zealand) the Waterside Workers Union was formed due to systems of hiring which severely disadvantaged the workers. This from wikipedia:

From about 1900 to the 1940s, work on Melbourne wharves was obtained through the bull system of labour hire where workers would be hired on a daily basis at a pick-up point, and which was prone to corruption. (See Wailing Wall.) In Sydney, workers would walk from wharf to wharf in search of a job, often failing to find one. (See The Hungry Mile.)

At an event last week I got into a healthy discussion on what's wrong with the gig economy - which to be fair is what prompted me to investigate further. Carl one of the main proponents of fair working conditions followed up with an email reminding me:

We know from history that inequitable and exploitative systems like that do not last… dressing it up in digital clothes and calling it a hip name do not automatically make it 'right'.

How is this different to Zero Hour Contracts?

Gig based engagements and zero hour contracts are kinda similar in their nature, here in NZ we got rid of the latter recently creating a fairer deal for employees and increased penalties for exploitative employers - the changes are explained here nicely by Rainey Collins:

"Zero hour" contracts in the past required employees to be available for work offered, without compensation for being available, and without some guaranteed hours.

This isn't the case everywhere with zero hour contracts used in the UK, Canada and Ireland for instance. How the gig based engagement model differs from zero hour contracts is in the terms and conditions, Zero Hour contractors are still employees so have statutory rights to holiday pay, sick pay, maternity and paternity rights etc. Gig based engagements usually involve signing up to the terms and conditions of the service provider (eg: UrbanSitter or Lyft).

Is this just a fad?

Many commentators have been predicting we will all be freelance workers in the future of work, engaged for our specialist capabilities by many organisations. This article predicts the majority of the US workforce will be Freelance by 2027 for instance. Freelancing as a model will provide employers with specialised capabilities when they need them and employees with flexibility and variety - so should be seen as a win for both.

The more exploitative practices associated with the gig economy however need to go and only the market or legislators can dictate that level of change. I personally choose not to use Uber and in researching this article found many gig workers choose not to be engaged by them. As with any disruptive era the market can rectify and regulate the model encouraging positive engagement with fair terms and conditions for all parties.

Personally I choose to undertake a blend of paid and pro-bono work which I love, it provides variety and flexibility for me while clarifying how much of my time I can afford to donate annually, currently 50% which is awesome.

Upshot from me - there are gig and freelance models that can work without exploitation we need to encourage and embrace these and accept the gig economy is here to stay.

Victoria is passionate about many things - growing great companies, raising digital literacy, growing New Zealands economy and equality for women. Her day jobs include Managing Director of data and information specialists OptimalBI, investor in start ups and numerous mentoring, advisory and board appointments. Victoria's community contributions include co-Chair of NZRise, Chair of the Digital Skills Forum, and Chair of Code Club Aotearoa. Reposted with kind permission.

I think we all knew all along that when it comes to Facebook, we are the product not the customer. But just how that adage is applied hasn't really sunk in, until now.

As former Techblog editor Bill Bennett said this morning, "Is anyone surprised that a site originally set up so nerdy blokes could compare notes on hot girls turned out to be creepy?"

It's one thing to have an understanding that Facebook sells my data to companies for commercial use. I understand that when I search for "hotels in Hawaii", my feed is going to fill up with ads for holidays and resorts and airfares. That's fine. It doesn't work because typically they don't understand why I was searching for "hotels in Hawaii" and so I get wonky results.

But that's a world away from using that same gathered data to then publish "news" stories in my feed about the quality of life in Hawaii, the need for greater vigilance around homeless people on the streets of Honolulu or why immigration policies are bad for the Hawaiian economy all because someone somewhere is pushing an agenda about any of those issues.

That Cambridge Analytica was doing just that is bad enough. Trying to influence two billion users through targeted fake news and posts written obviously by manipulators is bad enough, but mix that in with Facebook's inability to police its own network and you have a recipe for disaster. As someone mentioned on Twitter today, the US election basically came down to 70,000 votes across a handful of electorates and that was enough to sway the decision. The finger is pointing directly at Mark Zuckerberg and his creation as being culpable in all of this and rightly so.

Facebook knew enough about fake news long before the election but so long as it was generating good income, nobody was allowed to question it. Facebook's chief information security officer kicked up enough of a stink, going head-to-head with Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg and the rest of the exec, that his role has been disestablished and he's moving on. All quietly, with no fuss, but we can't have that dissenting view in the exec room.

We're not just talking about well placed ads encouraging you to vote for Trump or for the UK to leave the EU or Vote Liberal. That's all fine and obvious and so what. No, CA's move was to plant stories and fake news designed to tickle that niggle you might have about economic stability or migrant workers or gun rights or whatever. How did they know to tickle your niggle and not mine? Because of the network of posts and people you've built around you. By giving you a gentle nudge (repeatedly nudging you) in a certain direction, CA encourage some people to vote one way or not to vote at all, or to turn out when normally they wouldn't. 

And given Facebook's approach to the newsfeed (yes, they call it a newsfeed) that removes the chronological order of things and allows Facebook to decide what to give prominence to, and what you'll see, and what you'll consume, the upshot is 70,000 well placed votes and 51% voting for Brexit and goodness knows what else. By the time you read this I fully expect to see yet more evidence of manipulation of other elections that we've yet to hear about.

That's assuming it all works, of course. I've seen plenty of technical folk say "yeah, well I don't buy it" and I tend to agree. These guys clearly are not the sharpest tack in the box. You just have to look at the Channel Four video of the meeting with the CEO and his team to see a group of people so in love with their own intellect they're oblivious to what was going on around them. Here's a hint: if you're a business doing shady things and someone rings you up and asks for a meeting to talk about what shady things you can do for them, do some due diligence and at least Google them, OK?

When all is said and done, the biggest crime CA committed appears to be the oldest trick in the book. Forget digital manipulation and fake news, CA used good looking prostitutes and hidden cameras (oh the irony) to bring down their targets. That's not a technology story, that's a Le Carre novel. It's also nothing new. Have a look at the story (linked below) about a Very British Coup - these people are well connected and have an agenda that's well known to the voter. It's just tarted up like a dot com company in the 90s and made to look new and shiny.

For Facebook, the news is all bad. Facebook's defence - that the company breached its terms and conditions and acted in bad faith - is risible. The company that has defined social media with two billion users and a market cap so large it has spawned a culture of unicorn stocks didn't know that one of its customers had accessed 50 million customer records? The company that built its business off influence and engagement didn't notice that its content was filling up with fake news and propaganda? The company that employs more data analysts than just about every other company in Silicon Valley didn't realise customers were searching for a distinct and unique set of key attributes and then targeting users with hate speech?

Either it didn't know, in which case the senior executive are incompetent, or it has lied to regulators in at least three countries (and probably more) and they're all about to go to jail. Either way the rise and rise of Facebook is over and the new watch cry will be "accountability". 

Facebook's first move was to ignore the evidence before it. It's second move, when approached by media, was to threaten legal action if the Guardian or New York Times dared print anything. Its third move was to suspend the Cambridge Analytica account because of discrepancies and its fourth move was to start blaming rogue employees. All of this is useless cover and fails to take into account one simple fact: the company knew about CA's activities nearly two years before it became public but did nothing to warn those users who had been compromised. In California, where Facebook is domiciled, that's a big mistake.

P.S. if you're looking for me on Facebook, you can stop. After reading the various links below, and a whole lot more besides, I've come to the conclusion that remaining a user of the service means nothing will change. I can't advocate for Facebook to be brought into line if I continue to provide it with the personal data, the connections and content it craves.

Metcalfe's Law - a network doubles in value with every single node added - works in reverse as well: for every user who leaves a network, its value halves. I've done that - I've pulled the pin on my account and I hope that's that.

Of course, I then remembered that the board of a charity I work with uses Facebook Messenger to communicate and that I'd just blown a big hole in that model. But no fear - within half a day we were all migrated over to WhatsApp, and we even figured out how to send GIFs to one another so it's like we never stopped. Many thanks, Aunties, and if anyone wants to donate to a great cause, let me know and I'll give you the details - via secure messaging application. 

The Washington Post - Cambridge Analytica linked to Blackwater founder 

Bloomberg - Facebook Just Lost More Than Tesla's Entire Market Cap in Two Days

Bella Caledonia - SCL - a Very British Coup

Gizmodo - Facebook Shareholder Files Class Action Suit Over Cambridge Analytica Scandal Fallout

BuzzFeed - The Truth About The Trump Data Team That People Are Freaking Out About

The Guardian - Cambridge Analytica execs boast of role in getting Trump elected

The Guardian - 'Utterly horrifying': ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

New York Times - Facebook's Surveillance Machine

The Guardian - Brenda the Civil Disobedience Penguin on Cambridge Analytica: the real crime was getting caught

The Washington Post - FTC opens investigation into Facebook after Cambridge Analytica scrapes millions of users' personal information

The Register - BOOM! Cambridge Analytica explodes following extraordinary TV expose

Sara Danner Dukic - How social media works (a Twitter thread that is really quite revealing)

R&D spending up

Good news on the home front. We are spending more on research and development in New Zealand. 

Statistics New Zealand has released its Business Operations Survey which "collects performance measures from New Zealand businesses to better understand the practices and behaviours they undertake that may affect their performance", and which measures R&D spending and for once, the news is good.

New Zealand firms spent $1.8 billion on R&D in 2017, an increase of 14% on 2016. The number of firms engaging in R&D is up 8% compared with 2014-2016, with good growth in the small to medium-sized enterprise space.

But conversely, our levels of innovation are down. The number of businesses that think they do innovate is down from 49% of all businesses in 2015 to 47% today.

"Cost and a lack of management resources remained the main barriers to innovation," says the report which also suggests a lack of skilled personnel was also seen as a significant barrier to innovation to around a third of businesses.

This is an area the government's CTO will have to address head on once he or she is in the hot seat. We need to build companies that are building the future, not companies that are doing the same thing over and over again. We still have a shot at that title of innovation leader - let's not squander it.

StatsNZ - Business Operations Survey 2017

Whither Wikipedia

I love Wikipedia.

Of all the sites on the internet I've found and used over my time here (which stretches way back to the dark days of 1996), Wikipedia is the one I use most often and the one that consistently provides the most value to me professionally.

As a searcher looking for facts, information, starting points, lost knowledge and more, Wikipedia is a great place to get the ball rolling. While my wife is busy telling me how much she enjoyed Season One of The Crown on Netflix, I could tell her how inaccurate its portrayal of Churchill was (particularly in the painting episode) without glancing up from my phone. As a professional mansplainer, this was bliss.

And so it was that when a client asked if I could tidy up its Wikipedia page I was quite excited. Time to flex my editing muscles, get my geek on and cite where needed.

Sadly, it was not to be.

Five minutes in I knew I was in trouble. Coding is not my natural environment so I was focused exclusively on making sure any changes I made would display the way I wanted, but that's not where the problems started. No, far from it - to date, I have yet to manage a single change.

The problem is if you work for a company (or worse, are a contractor employed by the company in question) they really don't want you editing your company page. Because it's not yours and, as an employee (or contractor) you are of course in league with the devil and not to be trusted.

That's OK. I get that. I've taken more marketing buzzwords out of documents than you've had hot dinners. I have stood firm against the sewerage-laden tide of synergies, above the line expectations and peeling the onion. I have rejected edits and removed the fluff from many a company's outputs and put more than my fair share of noses out of joint.

I know Wikipedia doesn't want "Company X, a leading provider of solutions to the ever burgeoning Goats as a Service Market" or its ilk. I'm not going to do that. I just want to update the company details and put in the new logo.

But sadly that is not to be. Wikipedia's process for such activity is not clearly defined anywhere on the site. Nowhere can you get the direct advice you need to make sure you don't upset anyone. And, talking to a variety of sources on various media, it's not just me. One correspondent happily maintained his company's Wikipedia page for three years until some editor discovered his IP address meant he was working inside the company and bam! the page was deleted.

Another spent 18 months in an edit war going back and forth trying to get factual information accepted only to have it rejected with little or no reason given. She has now been banned from editing Wikipedia pages for life.

One more, who shall definitely remain nameless, managed to get the changes he needed made - by paying an editor to stop deleting the changes.

Wikipedia, this is not a technology issue. It's not even a process issue really, although frankly that needs some serious work. This is a cultural issue that is going to fly in the face of your own desire to be an encyclopaedia that has the most up to date and relevant information. Instead, you're left with a bunch of corporate pages that are out of date, misleading or just missing entirely and that's not ideal.

If anyone has any ideas on a way forward that will reduce the edit wars, ensure the marketing speak is kept out and still allows accurate data to put put forward, do let me know. 

Until then, I'm going to have to take pretty much everything on Wikipedia with a very large grain of salt.

Wikipedia 

Criticism of Wikipedia

My initial reaction was good for them! very bold challenging this apparent expert and put her to the test. Then I faltered. As a person who breaks into conversations loudly with statements like "Kia ora, you look like you are having an interesting chat" or "Hi Helen, I have always wanted to meet you" what tips could I give networking newcomers?

Be armed with Conversation Starters

One of the exercises I take groups through is Conversation Starters, in a small group brainstorm then practice to see how well your conversation starter idea lands. The general guidelines I suggest are - don't get too personal, you never know how someone is feeling or what happened to them today; don't get too political (with one exception below) or religious; and most importantly not everyone likes to talk about the weather.

To start them off I throw out some initial ideas:

• Trump, living on the other side of the world it's pretty safe to open a conversation with "did you see what Trump did today/yesterday/last week" everyone has an opinion.
• Black Mirror / Game of Thrones are highly polarising relatively safe topics "how are you coping with this long wait until GoT season 8" or "did you watch Black Mirror 4". People either love or hate them or have no idea what you are talking about - it works on so many levels.
• Or if you're not comfortable with either of those, one I find disarms people and gets them talking "what's your biggest hight light so far this year/month/week?" (warning sometimes that one can spiral if they have nothing good happening in their lives).

Armed with conversation starters was not enough for this audience! They really wanted to know how to step up and manoeuvre themselves into a group already formed and talking.

Start with a Smile

Just like reading the body language of the group you are planing to break into - are they an open group who might be receptive or closed group trying to have a private conversation? - they will assess your body language so start with a smile.

• Smiles are amazing.
• Smiles are contegious.
• Smiles make you feel positive
• even a forced smile can boost your self esteem.
• Smiles make you seem likeable.
• Smiling helps you stand up straight.
• Be Brave and Try again

Sometimes breaking into a conversation doesn't happen the first time, one polite person smiles and nods but they don't let you join in. This is when you need to be brave and try again - I suggest with a different group.

If you find yourself hovering around a group you will hear what they are talking about which provides another great conversation starter "I heard you talking about the rubix cube earlier….." or "sorry to interupt but you might be interested to know over 350 million rubix cubes have been sold since 1977".

The other challenge posed by my FLINT audience was waiting to meet one person in particular - the speaker after an event, or the host, or your idol Helen. This one is tricker. The speaker or host or celebrity might have quite a queue waiting to meet them. My advice is to stand quietly near to them, wait for a pause in the conversation then armed with your smile say "Helen, I thought your talk was fascinating and wanted to ask you …." starting with a question will establish a basis for a conversation. If that doesn't work, figure out who their offsider is and initiate a conversation with her/him, ask them to introduce you.

A good speaker or host or celebrity will keep the line moving (if it's that scenario) so waiting your turn will work vs barging in remember this is your first impression.

Golden Rule - be aware of others trying to join your conversation too

Finally, remember there will be others like you at an event, people wanting to network and realise the benefits. Keep an eye on the person hovering or standing alone and help them put their networking skills to the test.

Good luck putting this all together! networking is hard but important. Be prepared, smile and be brave "Functions, Events, Parties - survival tips" and you should have a great experience. Vic.

Often found laughing, Victoria loves what she does "We live in a great country so helping every New Zealander reach their potential in life is something we can all aspire to achieve". You can find Victoria on LinkedIN or Twitter or on Medium. Cross-posted with kind permission.

It's a good job with no heavy lifting but it does require that I sit at a keyboard for long periods of my life clattering away (at about 70 words per minute - I've slowed down in my old age) producing written materials.

Some of these words are news stories, some are blog posts, some are press releases, some are communication strategies, some are silly twiddlings for fun but all of them, every last one, have for the past 20 years put food on my table, shoes on my children and a roof over our heads.

I love copyright.

I love being able to think about something, write it down and have it magically become worth something to someone.

I've written for an employer, written as a freelancer, written for fun and written for profit. I produce intellectual property and I get to charge people for it. Rarely does this put me in harm's way (legal threats notwithstanding) and I'm usually home in time for dinner.

Copyright has been good to me and long may that continue. But copyright isn't what it used to be and these days it's the bone of contention in a fight between copyright owners and consumers.

Copyright isn't broken but by golly there are those that are trying to bend it to fit a new and bizarre shape.

Copyright laws basically give the creator of content a monopoly over that content for as long as they see fit. Some can immediately change those rights (this is their right, after all) and give the stuff away for free. I do that regularly myself and I have no problem with Creative Commons or any of the other copyright alternatives out there. Or you can hang on to the copyright until the day you die… and possibly even longer depending on where you live. Die. Whatever.

This then is the problem because copyright these days isn't about protecting the author, it's about protecting the content owner and the needs of an owner aren't always aligned with the wishes of or indeed the best interests of the author.

Take Shakespeare. Would we be reading his works in school if they were still in copyright? We would not because the cost would be too high. And all those movies and TV shows based on his writings? Nope. But let's take it one step further - what about Will himself, a man who never saw a storyline he didn't want to "borrow". Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, all of the Henrys and even the Richard, all based on someone else's writings and often on several other someone's.

Today's world of copyright is one of insurmountable barriers to consumption. It's one where you can buy the content you want (sorry, the right to engage with the content you want) only on certain terms and woe betide you want to do it in another way because you'll be a THIEF and a SCOUNDREL and we must have MORE LAWS to protect us from your FOUL DEEDS.

This is hopeless.

We need a way to protect copyright without criminalizing the customers. We need a way to ensure the customers aren't just taking the material without paying for it and we need a way to ensure the content producers are fairly recompensed for their intellectual efforts.

Currently hardly any of that is working well.

Corey Doctorow was in town this week for a talk about copyright at the NetHui Copyright session organised by InternetNZ and held in Wellington. Doctorow is almost as famous for his opposition to modern copyright regimes as he is for being an actual paid author so his writings on the subject are always of interest. His musings on digital rights management (DRM) are particularly entertaining, especially if you've ever encountered my favourite error message, YouTube's "The uploader has not made that content available in your country". I suspect it actually takes more effort to do that than to just publish the damned video in the first place.

Techblog - Doctorow on copyright and digital locks

Computerworld - Google-backed report argues for copyright law relaxation

Computerworld - InternetNZ calls for copyright law reform

Stuff/RNZ - New Zealand copyright law set for a shakeup (December 2017)

May you live in interesting times

Ah, the internet. Borne of 1960s Woodstock, free love, flowing yet somehow greasy locks, of the yearning to be free and interconnected but also holding on to that dream of a military-grade information sharing platform that can't be knocked out by Soviet nukes.

Simpler times.

Today the idea that we have an internet at all is one that frankly boggles the mind, given the extremes of views around the world, often between people ostensibly on the same side (and occasionally, in the heads of the one person naming no names Donald).

Some want nothing banned, a free-for-all where children can download bomb-making recipes and 3D print kidneys for their ageing parents (or some such).

Others want hate speech banned, fake news to be thrown out and for us all to get along.

Yet more want Our Glorious Leader to be enshrined in a Position of Power for All The Upper Capital Fellows to Know and Love.

Some just want to be forgotten.

Others want to be stars, even if only for a moment.

It's all a bit of a muddle really and creating laws around this muddle has been something of a challenge for many jurisdictions.

Laws, you see, tend to apply to a geography. In this [place] it is legal/illegal [pick one] to [do the thing] that would get you arrested/not raise an eyebrow [pick one] in [the other place].

That doesn't really work when you're not in a particular place but rather "on the internet".

And so we have a looming schism unless we can all get along. Given the current state of world politics, this really could be the least of our problems.

In Europe, for example, they take a dim view of certain behaviours that in the United States are veritably held up in high esteem. No, I'm not talking about gridiron, I'm talking about online privacy and the right to not have your personal data shared far and wide for advertising purposes unless you really want that to happen.

So, the EU has introduced a new data retention law that affects all data stored in the EU but also, quite significantly, data stored about EU citizens anywhere in the world.

I'm an EU citizen. Some of you have data stored about me. Have you considered your responsibilities under the new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and how you'll go about discharging that with care and consideration?

Probably not, I'm going to suggest.

The EU proposed (and indeed introduced) the GDPR two years ago with a deadline of May 25 this year, yet tellingly a recent report suggests 22% of EU businesses don't know how they're going to implement GDPR regulations in their own business.

To quote from the first of the stories linked to below, "All companies with more than 250 employees that process the personal data of people residing in the EU, regardless of the company's location, must comply." (emphasis added)

Yes, the EU is indeed making rules that will apply in New Zealand.

While this is in and of itself a very interesting set of issues for New Zealand and for data protection around the world, what is even more interesting in my mind is that even now, decades into this digital revolution, we still don't have a unified joined-up view of how to manage all of this. If the EU can enact laws that may or may not bind New Zealand companies, what's to stop Saudi Arabia doing the same? Or Russia? Or China? Or, gods forbid, Donald Trump?

What becomes of sovereignty and independence in a world where our primary means of communication, of commerce, of education, of health care and of economic prosperity is a shared resource that we don't fully control or indeed (if we are elected officials) understand?

Interesting times indeed.

Security Boulevard - Preparing for the GDPR: What You Need to Know Now

The Guardian - WhatsApp sharing user data with Facebook would be illegal, rules ICO

The Register - WhatsApp agrees not to share user info with the Zuckerborg… for now

It's a matter of ethics

For every story about a new app, a unicorn stock, a start-up that's changing the world, a technology that is truly revolutionizing a country and making people's lives better, there seems to be an equal and opposite story of greed, of lying to customers, of ripping off shareholders, of trying to profit from other people's misery.

From the CEOs who sell stock before announcing a problem with their product to the Pharma Bro who saw an opportunity and is now serving time for his efforts (although of course he wasn't arrested and convicted for ripping off patients but for ripping off shareholders. Patients, it seems, are fair game), to the business managers who make up fake products to sell on to unsuspecting buyers, the tech sector is full of these cowboys and I'm sick of them.

Every industry must be littered with this people but for some reason it irks me more in the tech sector. Is it because of the immense promise I see stretching out before us? Is it just that I used to get to write about spammers who were unrepentant and the snake oil salesmen with the obviously crooked money making schemes who threatened physical violence and legal action (neither materialized) and if they were very bold to "never advertise in that rag again". Yeah, whatever.

I suspect that's it though. We see these products and services being touted as being better than what they're replacing and often times they are but usually there's a catch and sometimes it's just that the service is illegal or doesn't work or isn't what it says on the tin.

I used to have an app that would let me photograph someone's business card and within 24 hours all those details would be added to my address book and to my LinkedIn page so I could connect with them. What optical character whizz this is, I thought, until I discovered that rooms full of Indian children were being paid a pittance to squint at my photos and type them up.

Or take Uber - a product designed to free the driver from the tyranny of the taxi company through a shiny app that makes everyone's lives easier, but still requires a driver to be shackled to the yoke of corporate demands and which made a lot of money by destroying the market. The same could be said of Facebook which has decimated the print advertising market but shuns all responsibility for the future of publishing even as readers cry out for unbiased content.

I have no idea how to fix this because the same drive that creates an innovator with a solution that will help the world also drives an innovator with a product that will help them get rich quick, even if it means someone else has to suffer along the way.

All I know is it comes down to ethics and having a moral compass to steer by. I'm not sure how we can retro fit those in to our entrepreneurs but given the state of the market I suspect we're going to have to. We really do need professional bodies like ITP, with a focus on ethics and good practice, now more than ever before.

The Guardian - Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes charged with 'massive fraud'

The Register - Bad blood: Theranos CEO charged with massive fraud

The Register - Ex-Samsung man to serve 6+ years in prison for embezzlement

The Register - Ex-Equifax exec charged with insider trading after bagging 1 MEEELLION dollars in stock sale

CNBC - 'Pharma bro' fraudster Martin Shkreli: I want to serve prison in a minimum-security federal camp

Newsweek - Robert Reich: America has a Martin Shkreli problem

The Spin Off - The mystery of Zach, New Zealand's all-too-miraculous medical AI

The Spin Off - The mystery of Zach the miracle AI, continued: it all just gets Terribler

NZ Herald - Jenny Ruth: Beware the hype: Go straight to the sums (2005)

At first glance, 68% is probably not much of a stretch. The digital uptake of select public services range from low 20s (Applying for an IRD number) to almost 90% (filing an individual tax return).

However, the census is the official count of how many people and dwellings there are in New Zealand. Almost all of the public funding is dependent on whether you or your group has been counted in the census.

By putting it primarily online, and putting the onus of getting the paper form back on the individual, we are at risk of artificially inflating our digital access in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Internet NZ and the 20/20 Trust did some good work on this recently. We can see quite clearly on a map that there are still sections of Aotearoa that do not have physical access to infrastructure, let alone any level of digital skill. These are the voices most in need of the support that the census leads to and the ones most at risk of being missed or misrepresented in the new system.

OMGTech! works regularly with children in high deprivation areas. Their households will probably answer "Yes" to the question of whether they have internet access. However, that often means one mobile phone on prepay. We argue that this does not mean true internet access. Especially not when we look at what is required for education these days.

The truth will come out in the wash. When the statistics are released, when we have a chance to drill down in what came back, it will be interesting to compare with data that is already out there. Will we see an artificially increased rate of digital access? Or will we see a true picture of Aotearoa's digital divide?

Viv Chandra is a volunteer with OMGTech! and occasional/annual Techblog guest poster

There are a whole bunch of reasons why we might feel negative about life. Stress about money or pressure at work; feeling lonely; a sense of loss after a relationship break-up or a death of a loved one; abuse or trauma; being bullied; feeling rejected, invisible or abandoned. Whatever the cause, if we carry these problems around with us every day, it is a heavy burden to bear.

For many people, it feels like life has turned to custard. Instead of bouncing back, they get weighed down by disappointment, despair, confusion and a sense of bitterness. When people feel this way, every other little thing that goes wrong in their life adds another heavy weight to their burden. It is a downward spiral. At some point in this downward journey they develop an empty space where natural happiness should be. They have a void to fill.

How do we fill the void?

There are many ways to fill this void. Most of them are destructive. 

Alcohol and drugs are common choices. Drink to oblivion so we don't feel the pain. Escape from reality for a while to make ourselves feel better. The problem here is we only escape for a short time and then the situation will probably be worse. Alcohol and drugs lead to poor decision-making, poor health, less opportunity for job satisfaction, fewer friends and a hole in your pocket where the money should be.

Eat more food to satisfy the inner need for comfort. We are literally hungry for something to make us feel good. For many people that do this, putting on weight is the result and this may lead to more problems. Health issues may develop, needing to buy new, bigger clothes may add to money stress, maybe even a sense of self-loathing if they become unhappy with their body shape.

Gambling to give us the chance of success when we feel like we are a failure. We know why the casino is full of glitz and glamour - it is because they make oodles of money. Gambling may give a temporary high now and then with a little win, but usually this habit results in losing money and in isolating yourself from people who care about you. You feeling of self-worth does not improve.

Throw ourselves into work - become a workaholic to take our mind off things and make us too busy to deal with the real issues. Productive? Yes, for a while. But usually not a good team player as these people are stressful to be around. Stomach ulcers and heart attacks are common, along with a variety of other stress-related health issues. Plus, you have no time for friends or family.

Sleep all day. Just don't get out of bed. Pull up the covers to feel like we are pampering ourselves. Shut ourselves off from the harsh reality of the world. This course of action can lead to having far too much time to think and dwell on everything that is miserable in your life. You are isolating yourself from others and making your problems triple in size (in your head). Lack of exercise will lead to more lethargy and less energy to deal with any issues you have.

Making it worse or getting better?

As you can see from the above examples, our attempts to fill the void, may simply create more problems. We may not realise it at the time, but filling the empty space inside us with the wrong things is actually creating a bigger empty space to fill. All of the above ways of filling the void are acts of self-sabotage, even if we do not intend them to be. 

Do you know someone who is in this state? Have you been in this situation yourself? Watch out for our next article on resilience, coming soon. We will talk about intervention and how to help.

Success With Grace is home of the TechBiz Success Academy, coaching and training to help technology based organisations thrive. Heather also invented the "Use your Yo-Yo" system for building resilience in people and organisations. For information about TechBiz programs go to www.techbizsuccess.com 

There are many ways of helping other people to build resilience, but if we can all do this one simple thing, it will make a vast difference. Here it is:

Help other people to make their own choices

That might sound simple - and it is - if it is done the right way.

We all make decisions and make choices every day. Most of us are OK with the little things, but some decisions are scary. The more important the decision is, the more stress we feel. Why? Usually because the consequences of more important decisions can make a huge difference to our feelings of success or failure.

To make good decisions we need to understand the benefits of getting it right and the consequences of getting it wrong. Plus, we need to feel confident in our ability.

It starts at a very young age. If we grow up being allowed to make our own choices, and we succeed, then we feel confident about making good decisions as an adult. However, if the choices we make in our early years lead to disaster, this will knock our confidence in decision-making.

To help young children become confident in making decisions, you need to help set the boundaries. For example, if you tell Sally, your four-year-old daughter, to choose whatever she wants to wear, you may find Sally dressed in a tu-tu and gumboots to attend your sister's wedding! Your negative reaction to this will knock her confidence and she will clearly need to get changed before the event. This will make her feel like you do not trust her, or that she is stupid. The way around this, is to lay out say, three suitable outfits for Sally, and ask her to choose which one she would like to wear for the occasion. Sally gets to make a choice - within the parameters you have created. She will make a good choice and it will give her confidence and experience in how to make the right choices in the future.

If you are wondering why I am explaining how to help a four-year-old, the answer is this: the same thing applies to people in your team. When you have new people in your team, they are learning their roles. Some will cope with being thrown in the deep end, in a sink-or-swim management style, but many will not. People who are new to your organisation or are in a new role, need the chance to make choices, within parameters. You need to define the parameters for them until they are confident in making those decisions.

They need to be empowered to make choices, so they can grow and develop as a person and give better value to the team. If you always make decisions for them, they will not be confident in making choices. If you expect them to make choices without knowing the parameters, they may make choices that are not appropriate. It is easy to blame your team member for making the wrong decisions - but first ask yourself if they knew the parameters to work within. How can you assist?

The thing is, at work we are all adults - or almost adults. So, it is easy to expect everyone to make good decisions. When people make the wrong choices, they will feel bad and you will feel frustrated. This is a vicious circle. Your team members will feel less and less confident about making choices if they are berated for making mistakes. This can lead to painful indecision and the slowing down of productivity. For the person at the core of this, self-worth goes down the drain.

Everybody makes mistakes. It is OK to make mistakes - as long as we learn from them. What you can do to help is limit the potential for mistakes by making sure others know the parameters to work within. Then good choices can be made and confidence will grow.

Once people have a good track record of making the right choices, they will build up a natural resilience. If they usually make good decisions and every now and then they make a bad one, they will be more likely to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and carry on. Once they have a belief in their own ability, small setbacks are simply a chance to learn and grow, rather than cause for anguish. More on this topic to come soon.

Success With Grace is home of the TechBiz Success Academy, coaching and training to help technology based organisations thrive. Heather also invented the "Use your Yo-Yo" system for building resilience in people and organisations. For information about TechBiz programs go to www.techbizsuccess.com 

After closing a lightning round of submissions, with a short-list of 60 would-be Digital Tsars (including the editor of this blog), the Minister of Communications and IT Clare Curran has decided to extend the search.

"This is a vital role to ensure we can use and develop digital technologies for the benefit of all New Zealanders. While the candidates we looked at have an impressive range of skills and backgrounds, I am not confident that we have found the right person yet," says Curran.

The role requires the newly anointed CTO to come up with a digital strategy for New Zealand as a whole, one that encompasses all that is implied by the title CTO and has an element of futurist about it as well. While the role has no authority to impose its will on the rest of government, the CTO should be able to make strong recommendations that are hard to ignore. 

However, the role has no budget or staff so finding the right person becomes of paramount importance.

"We always knew it was going to be extremely difficult to find one person with all the skills we want so I've decided not to appoint anyone to the position at this time and to seek input and perspectives from a new digital advisory group which is being set up. As I've said previously, this is a role for someone who has a high level of expertise in the digital technology industry, who is passionate about the issues, who carries the influence needed to stimulate public discussion," says Curran.

"Even though I am very keen to establish this role, I'm not prepared to make a decision in haste.

And it sucks. Right?

How do you respond? Do you bounce back when the going gets tough? Resilience is a learned behaviour. Read on to find out more about resilience - it is vital to your success in life.

When bad stuff happens….

You have a number of options available to you, but not many of us think through our options. Most of us just react in the same way we always have. 

For some people, this means getting angry and full of hate. Other people respond by feeling worthless and getting depressed. Some people cry. Some slam doors, kick the cat, get drunk, wake up with a hangover and then feel even more sad about life in general.

In the IT industry, it is no surprise that we have people suffering from mental health issues. Think about it…

You come up with a good idea, but it gets rejected. So, you feel rejected.

You work well into the night trying to solve a problem and then get an angry customer yelling at you the next morning because the issue is not fixed. This makes you feel unappreciated.

You get criticised by people that do not understand you. Therefore, you feel misunderstood.

Nobody seems to appreciate just how much pressure you are under. So, you feel stressed.

Much of the development work or project work we do has a fair amount of trial and error. Fix one bit and another issue gets created. And it all has to be done within impossible deadlines. Now you start to feel you are not good enough.

Phew! Life is tough sometimes - and the above are just a few examples! There are plenty more.

Self-doubt holds us back. 

Feeling worthless creates a void inside us that we need to fill.  This can lead to self-sabotage.

If we think nobody cares about us, the reality may be that we don't self-care.

The problem is, it is a vicious circle. The more we self-doubt, self-sabotage and don't self-care, the worse it gets. Other people may stop trying to help or may avoid you when you are down. Why?

It is easy to be kind to people who are kind to themselves.

But it is really hard work to help somebody who seems to hate themselves.

I have painted a grim picture here - but unfortunately, this is the reality for many of our IT Professionals. It is an issue we need to tackle, as an industry. We must stop the vicious circle. We must provide resilience training. 

There is no "one-size-fits-all" approach. Yes, having general resilience skills will help. But there are many root causes of stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. Each one needs a different course of action to overcome it. 

The worst thing we can do is ignore it.

In the coming weeks, we will have more articles about resilience, along with a few tips and tools you can use in your personal life and at work. Watch this space!

Success With Grace is home of the TechBiz Success Academy, coaching and training to help technology based organisations thrive. Heather also invented the "Use your Yo-Yo" system for building resilience in people and organisations. For information about TechBiz programs go to www.techbizsuccess.com 

No, not one of the red shirt wearing brigade on Star Trek but rather the proposed head of all things digital for the government.

CTOs aren't uncommon and the government already has one, but the roles tend to be more operational and technical in nature. The proposed role appears to be more aspirational and about setting goals and vision for the government both as a user of technology but also as an actual government - one that sees a future looming and realizes it needs to do something to prepare the country as a whole.

So here are a few issues for the new Tech Lord to consider and start measuring if we're to become the tech powerhouse I know we can be.

R&D - we have to double the value of our spending on R&D as a percentage of GDP if we're to get to the middle of the pack. If we want to get up there with the market leaders we'd need to quadruple it but first things first, let's see about reaching the OECD average. This isn't about government spending more - we already hit that target at a run - but rather it's about government setting the parameters properly for private sector spending on R&D.

Women in technology. Given women make up roughly 50% of the population, I'd like to see roughly 50% of the jobs in IT going to women as well and not for any arbitrary reason but because diversity is vital if we're to develop apps and solutions that have a market in the world at large. Same goes for "minorities" who are, let's face it, in the majority. Diversity is the name of the game and this is easily measured and should be easy to address. Should be.

Technology in schools. I'm very pleased to see more effort going on in this area year by year. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programmes, Network4Learning, digital learning environments, new tools for teachers and administrators, it's all coming together nicely. Now we have to ensure that all our kids have access to digital learning both at school and at home because we're moving to an all-digital world where homework can be set and completed online. Technology in schools is only part one of the project.

Which brings me to the Digital Divide. Connectivity and networking is essential if we're to take our place in the world and that goes doubly so for rural and remote New Zealand. I don't want to develop a class system based on haves and have nots: let's make sure our more remote communities can get access to the latest tech wherever possible. Yes, people in remote areas tend to be there for a reason but if we're talking regional economic development, digital capability is essential.

International connectivity. I'm glad to see new cables finally being laid (it's only been a decade or so since we first demanded redundancy) but that's only the physical layer - we need connectivity at all layers. We need an environment where international money, international employers and international workers all want to come to New Zealand. Currently that's not entirely the case. We have great assets but we also have no strategy for attracting the best talent to New Zealand. That has to be a priority.

And finally the new CTO needs to consider the impact and implications of the move to automation on our society. It's not just truck drivers and petrol pump attendants who are going to find their work automated - farmers, lawyers, pilots, diagnosticians and a whole range of others will also discover their jobs are better performed by robots. There will be new jobs created I am sure, but for those caught in the whirlwind of change that's going to be a particularly difficult transition. We need to handle it carefully.

There. A recipe for a new CTO. Applications should be directed to the Beehive.

CIO - CTO proposal in the government's 100-day fast track

Computerworld - Government to create chief technology officer role

Reuters - Technology invading nearly all U.S. jobs, even lower skilled: study

The New Yorker - The Tech Industry's Gender-Discrimination Problem

The Digital Self

It's only a matter of days since Apple launched the iPhone X with its face recognition software but already someone has successfully (with a large grain of salt) hacked the software.

Putting aside for the moment the question of whether a carefully constructed and poised rubber mask actually counts (see story below for details) it really only is a matter of time before this kind of hack becomes routine and that has to be troubling. Not because I worry about my face being stolen, although that is a problem, but because we now trust so much of our selves to our devices that a hack that gets in can and will cause years of damage.

There are some identifiers that banks and government agencies like to use. Mother's maiden name and IRD numbers are the obvious ones - so if they get compromised, where do you turn? And if you, like me, are starting to trust third party apps with more access to your details (Apple knows my credit card number. So does Dashlane and a raft of other providers) then the potential spread of companies that pose a risk to my security is large and growing ever larger.

How long will it be before something major and irreversible happens to a very large number of people, I wonder. We've already seen Yahoo! try desperately to pretend it wasn't hacked much, even though it was totally compromised - what if a real service provider gets caught?

There's really no going back from that sort of mess, yet we seem hell bent on charging in that direction.

Computerworld - How to fool Face ID on the iPhone X

The headlights of disruption

The New Zealand Initiative and InternetNZ have released their report Analog Regulation, Digital World on the state of regulation facing the technology sector and sadly found few successes and many opportunities for improvement.

This shouldn't surprise us as last time a major piece of digital regulation was introduced (the Copyright Act) it was a shambles and days after introducing it the minister responsible was happy to stand up in Parliament and declare that he didn't know what Netflix was.

Since then we've had more craziness in the form of the GCSB and SIS legislation governing what we can spy on (us) and stupidity around the Patents Act which nearly went in with software as a patentable item - something every sane country in the world has rejected.

Hopefully we've put those woeful attempts to regulate technology behind us but MPs are not renowned for their fast moving use of fast moving technology and are often caught in the headlights of disruption.

The report highlights several areas that could do with something of a tidy up:

Copyright must surely be first off the blocks with a review underway and much room to improve. Film and television censorship must be updated to take into account the global and far reaching availability of content.

Open data principles needs to be translated into actual practice - something we've struggled with in the past.

Anti-Money Laundering legislation has been the bane of my existence. Having to go into a branch to fill in forms to set up a business account (like an animal) in this day and age is laughable.

The Harmful Digital Communications Act is due for review and frankly you have to wonder whether it's worth maintaining at all. Much like the "car crushing boy racer" legislation, it runs the risk of being seen as a knee-jerk reaction to something of a media beat up.

Those are the easy ones and I'm sure we can all name various bits of mad legislation that simply don't work in the digital era.

Looks like the new CTO will definitely have their work cut out for them.

Techblog - Keep up with technology or be left behind

NZ Initiative - Analog Regulation, Digital World

We showed the kids what goes on inside a computer by playing Pacman (sorta), but more importantly, we showed them how much fun it is to do things in tech. How something like a video game can be boiled down to a series of commands between different bits of a computer.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry, come along to an OMGTech! workshop and i'll take you through it too. It's not rocket science, but hopefully it could lead to creating a few kids capable of it!

In December, we will officially launch this exciting new initiative and your company needs to be a part of it. I know that as a reader of the ITP blog, you work for a tech company, you might even own the tech company. We need YOU.

We need you to show the next generation that "wow" moment. Remember that moment in your lives? I remember it. I was only ten years old. I had a Pre-Computer 1000 and I was given a magazine with a bunch of code in it. It promised me that if I typed each line of the code into my computer I would get a text-based adventure game. So I switched my computer to BASIC mode and typed it in, one painstaking line at a time. The entire time, I was dubious that it wasn't just a waste of my life. Then it worked… I got the tiny blinking cursor, and it was like magic, I could type in commands and I could play my game.

For some of the kids that we deal with, they don't have any gear. They don't have access to tech, and they don't have access to the techy books that can give them this information. Most of all, they don't have access to people like you.

Here at OMGTech! we're not worried about our kids. Our kids are fine. They understand that if they don't get something, they can search for it online and get the answer straight away. They understand that they can learn whatever they want to. See whatever they want to, all at the click of a mouse button.

We need to take this to the other kids. The ones that don't have that. And we need you to do it, For you it's only one day, but for them it can change their entire life. Will you join us?

Viv Chandra is a volunteer with OMGTech! and occasional/annual Techblog guest poster

One challenge is simply, that if women are not putting themselves forward for progression, then how can we progress them. Another challenge is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome, from females, males and organisations. For example, how are we attracting women to these roles, and how are we adapting the environment to encourage the pool of talented and capable women who left the workforce to have children, to return. The mums that have gone on parental leave and either not returned or returned at a lesser capacity or capability. It is challenging enough taking time out of the workforce to have children, (especially in such a fast moving industry), without the challenge of an environment that is not conducive to a mum managing her family and her career.

Perhaps the challenge is not simply encouraging mothers to return to the IT industry, but to encourage them to embark in the technology sector from an early stage and not be limited by current environmental factors.

Interestingly I was recently asked to speak at a Women in ICT conference, and as always I jumped at the chance to share time with 60-70 enthusiastic, passionate and successful women. In my research for the conference, what surprised me were the statistics for the New Zealand tech industry, where only 25% are female. This means 75% of roles, whether they are leadership roles, governance roles, financial decision making roles are mostly held by males. So in terms of career progression in this industry, it is even harder for women.

I believe women deserve better, our customers deserve better and our daughters deserve better. With only 25% females in the industry, with even fewer at a leadership level, it's already a challenge and if you choose to have a family and a career in tech, chances are you will be further disadvantaged. The gender pay gap starts at the beginning, with women in tech under the age 25 whose earnings are on average 30% less than their male counterparts. Interesting to know that in high tech industries the quit rate is more than twice as high for women than it is for men. I would suggest that a compelling reason for this is the challenge to have a career in tech and have a family.

So what can we do to encourage change, at an individual level, an organisational level and at an industry level?

As Executive Director of Professionelle I often see research on women in leadership and the challenges faced with career progression. Research and also in my experience of what I see, is women believe that if we work hard, we are good at what we do, we will get recognised and progress to the next level. Work hard, we get recognised and rewarded. Make sense right? Wrong.

Whereas in school and university getting the grades did mean getting the opportunities, it isn't so simple in the context of work. Research demonstrates that performing in your current role is a necessary but insufficient ingredient in itself for career success and progression. Things like image and exposure become more and more important as you progress in your career.

At the recent ICT conference, I spoke about a theory called PIE. While there's no one-size-fits-all way to achieve success, PIE is a tool which shows there are three levers that you can pull on to have a real, lasting impact on your career.

P = Performance

Performance is something that many women feel comfy with. Delivering the goods is what so many of us do well. But when it comes to making sure we're doing the RIGHT tasks to help ourselves succeed? That's what some of us aren't quite so good at. This is when it is important to know what to say YES to and what to say NO to. What are our boundaries, and what are our negotiables and non-negotiables?

I = Image

Image is all about how you're seen, or remembered. Whether it's being known as an expert, a pushover, a supportive coach, or a bad-ass boss, your image is your personal brand - and it's vital that you're authentically and positively building on it.

E = Exposure

Exposure is simple - it's about how well you're known. Do you have a big network who are talking about you and recommending you? Do the higher-ups in the business know who you are? Regardless of who you need to be known by, how are you getting in front of them.

One of the key insights that came from the conference, is the importance of female role models, mentors, sponsors and peer promotion. Women often find it hard to promote themselves, the key is to encourage internal and external relationships where we can support, mentor and advocate for each other to encourage change at a wider level.

Jayne Chater is the Executive Director of Professionelle, a social venture dedicated to advancing women's careers. Jayne is an executive coach, director, female advocate, mother of three, taxi driver and facilitator in exactly that order. 

For the love of god don't tell my mother, but I don't have a degree.

I am three papers shy of completion, not for want of trying but for want of cash.

The government of the day (gather round, children, and listen to Wisdom Hard Earned) decided that instead of subsidising summer jobs and fees for students studying at tertiary institutes, it would cast such things aside and Let The Market Decide.

What the market decided was to call in interest-free overdrafts and low-interest student loans in favour of a new regime. Students would be able to get themselves hip-deep in debt in exchange for the now highly-valued degree with which they would then earn high-paying jobs.

Of course, those of us working part time and studying part time in order to support ourselves through university were told "Oh yeah, we didn't think about you" and so we weren't eligible for these new student loans and so had to choose between completing our education or paying our rent. My landlord chose for me, and so it was I embarked on a career of table waiting, pizza delivery and seething socialism.

Education, as the man says, is the silver bullet to pretty much any problem you care to come up with and so I'm a big fan of educating our youth and encouraging them to become productive members of society in whatever form that takes.

Here in the ICT sector though we have a bit of a problem. Not enough people join the industry to help the industry grow. Too few study tech subjects at school, fewer take that option into tertiary study and fewer still go on to work in ICT related areas.

We have a skills shortage and we have an uphill job to get those roles filled.

One hundred or so of the country's leading innovation brands have banded together to tell all New Zealand that they are so desperate for new recruits that they'll drop the "must have a tertiary qualification" requirement on some jobs.

This is a very good move because it encourages those who weren't a good fit for tertiary study to apply for jobs that will ultimately become really quite rewarding. The MBIE Occupation Outlook website lists ICT architects and software developers' prospects as "good" to "in demand" and says growth is huge so you'll be well placed.

But I can't help putting my sceptical hat on briefly and saying perhaps if these companies were really serious they would increase the wages and benefits they paid (so as to compete for the high-end graduates who are coming through) and would start up paid internships and apprenticeships to fill in the rest. Because if we've taught our youth anything in particular it's that their skills are transferable and they are able to foot it in the global market and if you want a future you can't buy a house in Auckland (or Wellington I suspect) so you might as well go to London or Berlin or LA and have a good time and potentially come away with a bonus or two that will make your head spin.

We need to address the issue of employment from all sides and we need to do it now. Actually, we need to do it ten years ago when we first started talking seriously about an impending staff shortage (see the links below) but we will have to settle for second best.

ICT is our third largest export earner and employs 100,000 people in high-paying roles. If we doubled that figure in the next decade, think what kind of future our kids would see. The alternative, as I found out all too well, is to learn how to say "would you like fries with that" and hope you can get the smell of pizza out of your car.

Techblog - Giz a job: Industry says no need for tertiary qualifications

RNZ - New Tech with Sarah Putt

MBIE Occupation Outlook  - Accountants

MBIE Occupation Outlook - ICT Architects

MBIE Occupation Outlook - Software Developers

Fuji Xerox tries to turn a new leaf - MBIE slams book shut

Fuji Xerox, that beleaguered provider of photocopiers (yes, I know they do other things as well) has announced a new country manager and a new head office-appointed chair of the local business to try to put the unpleasantness of the past few years behind it.

Unfortunately for the company, one of its biggest customers, namely the New Zealand government in the form of the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has terminated Fuji Xerox's contract for Office Supplies, effective immediately, and suspended the company from the Print Technology and Associated Services (PTAS) contract, which serviced 93 government agencies.

That's got to be a big blow to the company as it struggles to rebuild its order book and also its tattered reputation in the New Zealand market.

Fuji Xerox will have to honour its current commitments under the PTAS contract but is barred from signing up any more government agencies for now.

The man charged with fixing all of this, however, has a long track record with Westpac NZ (the government's bank) and within government itself. Peter Thomas was CIO for the New Zealand Defence Force and Deputy CEO of the corporate services division of MBIE during its merger. If anyone can turn around Fuji Xerox's relationship with government it will surely be someone with his credentials.

Techblog - New broom at Fuji Xerox

Computerworld - New MD and new chair for Fuji Xerox NZ

Computerworld - MBIE bars Fuji Xerox NZ from all-of-government contracts

NBR - Serious Fraud Office takes another look at Fuji Xerox

NBR - Fuji Xerox sues former execs

In case of emergency, hit the snooze button

They say 4am is the time when the KGB would bang on the door and demand you accompany them to the cell for a little light questioning because you're so asleep at that time you can't really function properly or resist. When you look at it like that, getting a TXT alert at 1.30am isn't so bad. No, really.

Of course, when it's an alert from Civil Defence telling you This Is Only A Test, the recipient might get a little tetchy and, since you have a smart device to hand, you might fire off a few unhappy grumbles to various social media sites.

And so it was that Wednesday morning dawned bright and cheeky for a number of news sites, including ITP's own Techblog (we even made it to The Register) as we made fun of Civil Defence sending out random alerts at that time of the day.

Initial discussion around an EU-based team stuffing up time zones seem to have faded away, but regardless of why the test was sent out to real life customers, more questions remain. Why is a team outside New Zealand doing this in the first place? Do we not have app developers locally? Why is it that government tends to use international providers over and above local providers and can we do something about that please?

And secondly, we have the "cry wolf" scenario. A significant number of grumpy recipients claim they have burrowed into the inner workings of their devices and switched off such notifications thus rendering the whole "let's get everyone up and moving because there's a civil disaster unfolding" somewhat ineffective.

Some disclosures here. I used to work for Vodafone and would regularly receive alerts about the network and have to respond to them at all hours of the day and night and so these days I sleep at the other end of the house from my phone; and secondly, I do some work for Blerter, a company which once created an app for Civil Defence (called Alerter) which did pretty much what the new cell-based service is trying to replicate.

There are two halves to the process: deciding to send out the alert and actually sending out the alert. The Red Cross has an app which Civil Defence has been using but which I had to uninstall as it was very nervous. Look out! it would shout, it's Raining in Rotorua! Yes. I'm sure it is, but do you need to be so alerty about it? Making the call to alert everyone to something is pretty big and should only be used in actual emergency situations.

(And allow me a moment to abuse all those newspapers and media outlets which have decided "BREAKING NEWS" actually refers to "We've just updated our website and have new stories to read". I have uninstalled apps for such abuses and will do so again, I'm sure. Stop it at once, and I really am referring primarily to you, New Zealand Herald).

And then there's the sending itself.

TXT messages will get through to most people but are a blunt instrument. It's very hard to tell whether a customer is in Auckland or Rotorua or Wellington and so a "get out of town, there's a volcano" alert might cause more harm than good without geographic certainty. TXTs also take some time to send - firing out hundreds of thousands of them at once is likely to cause congestion on the network.

Meanwhile, apps can access GPS coordinates so that solves the geography issue but will only alert those with the app and then only those notifications enabled, which again isn't ideal.

The government has chosen a third path - cell broadcast - which should offer the best of both worlds. No need to install an app - the notification will be pushed directly to your phone, but only to those phones that are attached to cellsites in the danger zone, thus ensuring a more targeted group of recipients.

But cell broadcast has been gathering dust around the world for years. As far back as 2009 Civil Defence described the technology as "outdated" and some devices need to be manually activated to receive cell broadcasts in the first place.

Ultimately we will need multiple pathways to alert as broad a range of people as possible - TXT, app, cell broadcast, police cars with sirens, radio and TV broadcasts, the lot. For now though, we'd all just like a good night's sleep.

Stuff - Early morning Civil Defence mobile alerts anger sleep-interrupted Kiwis

NZ Herald - Good morning! It's your 1.32am Civil Defence alert test

Techblog - This is a test of the emergency management system

Computerworld - Lack of phone support spares many from MCED's midnight messages

Computerworld - 'Outdated' cell broadcasting for emergency messages