Category Archives: Opinion

Did Govt. Squander Economic Transformation Opportunity?

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Prime Minister Helen Clark has often called for New Zealanders to “back themselves” in business with the same enthusiasm that we support our sports teams. But after nine years in charge, Labour seem to have run out of ideas on the economic development front.

To be fair, I agree with the points made by Infometrics economist Chris Worthington in this weekend’s DomPost. Dr Cullen’s boring but fiscally responsible twin planks of repaying government debt and instigating a universal superannuation fund has put the economy in a strong position to weather the global economic storm and cope with future demands on resources from an ageing populace. On the downside, the oft quoted aspirational goals, regarding climbing the OECD ladder, will not be met anytime soon. Equilbrium is the best we can hope for.

I suppose a mediocre economic performance and low growth is better than a meltdown. But our greatest failure has been an inability to put capital to work more productively. There is no shortage of ideas in New Zealand on how to leverage innovation. However we are simply not good enough at attracting capital and executing on those ideas. Even addressing basic infrastructural issues such as broadband and roading seems about as easy as wading through treacle – yet almost everyone agrees that these are urgent issues. We can’t afford to wait until near the end of each election cycle before committing to such projects.

The Labour government had a burst of enthusiasm in 2001 when it backed the Knowledge Wave Conference. A lot of good ideas sprung out of this event and there was initially a great deal of goodwill generated amongst business movers and shakers. The Growth and Innovation Advisory Board (GIAB) was established shortly afterwards with an impressive looking group of influential business people involved. But nary a word has been heard since. The last press release from GIAB itself was in 2005 and a number of promising initiatives such as the ICT Taskforce have been quietly subsumed as attention drifted once again back to the primary sector as our economic saviour.

Lately independent thinktanks and commentators have been attempting to fill the void left by the lack of government leadership. But there is not a coordinated effort. Auckland seems to benefit increasingly from government largesse in terms of technology and innovation programmes at the expense of other regions. Hence the incoming government needs to think seriously about developing an equitable national innovation blueprint that will drive progress on these issues.

So why didn’t Labour propose a Fast Forward styled initiative for the ICT sector for example? Aspirational goals are fine, but if we are to overcome the disadvantages of geographic distance from capital and consumer markets and an over-reliance on tourism and primary exports, we need some radical solutions. We also need the commitment to back ourselves, as the PM often states. Half measures and programmes that only nibble at the edges of the problem simply don’t cut it.

Yes there are competing calls on government budget; but how are we to pay for improving health, education and superannuation in the future if we cannot earn a crust in the world and remain competitive? Now, I don’t think Labour entirely squandered the opportunity during their tenure, but they failed to generate and support a really powerful and vibrant leadership vision for how innovation might strongly underpin economic growth.

The scary part is that the blue squad seem to have even less of a clue on how to go about it. Certainly the prospect of having living fossils like Williamson, English and Brownlee sitting around the Cabinet table is not an appealing one in terms of ideation. Other small nations like Singapore, Malaysia, Ireland and Finland have backed themselves with investment and forward thinking public initiatives on innovation. Why can’t we?

Now the Unions are Quashing Political Freedoms

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1984_apple1.jpgStanding as a list MP candidate for the ACT Party seems rather like an exercise in futility, but does anyone else find it hugely ironic that New Zealand’s most powerful union has reportedly suspended an employee for political activity?

OK, the gentleman in question may have been a bit naive in how he went about it. Records show that he did raise the possibility of his parliamentary candidacy with the union, but there seems to be some confusion over whether or not he had received their permission. But irrespective of this, since when can employers dictate what political beliefs their employees may hold? The union objected to the behaviour simply because it did not align with their own ideology. If the guy had been standing for the Labour Party or Greens, you can guarantee nobody in the union management would have been the least bit concerned.

I have a huge amount of respect for Andrew Little and what he has achieved with EPMU by dragging it out of the dark ages and making it relevant again. I went to school with him way back when. He’s a very smart guy, so I’m surprised he dropped the ball on this one by playing into the hands of his critics. Unions have an important role in civil society but it is not their role to restrict political freedoms.

Anyhoo…at least the EPMU story is a welcome diversion from the tedium surrounding the Winston show. The scary part about Slick Winnie is that his geriatric fanbase demographic grows bigger every year. Despite his many indiscretions, he is likely to remain a thorn in the side of future governments for some time yet. The guy gets way too much airtime and yet contributes very little of real value. Consequently, in this election year, the rabid media are neglecting to challenge politicians on the REAL issues such as crime, education, health and economic growth.

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Entrepreneurs Epilogue

ideegeo continues to make progress as we build developer capacity and deal with all the administrative issues that go with a brand new business. It’s my role to look after the admin stuff so that the developers can get on with what they are good at doing. At present we need to find a balance between consulting and product development, but we always expected this would be the case to begin with.

Consequently, we currently have some developer bandwidth available to help out with web-based enterprise application development and implementation. The skill set includes experience in Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby plus we are exploring Erlang which we think is the next big thing in web-based application development.

We specialise in transactional environments requiring high volume and low latency. Experience operating in MySQL and other commonly deployed databases is a given of course. Our lead tech guy has held CTO roles in large technology organisations offshore and already has an impressive CV of New Zealand projects under his belt, including trouble-shooting legacy software.

If we can help out on a project, drop me a message: paul (at] ideegeo {dot] com

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

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birdsnest.jpgDissident Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, employed by a Western firm to design the iconic “Birdsnest” Olympic stadium in Beijing, exclaims that he now hates the stadium because it symbolises China’s relentless march toward modernism. He says that the carnival atmosphere of the games masks what is really going on in the world’s most populated nation and has called upon others to boycott the games in protest.

There’s no doubt that the 2008 Olympiad will be the biggest and most impressive live stage show in history and China quite rightly wants to put on a good performance for its coming out parade. But lingering concerns remain that the games hoop-la is simply a facade beyond which there lies an overbearing state machine that has made little real progress on human rights and environmental issues since it secured rights to hold the the games. I have already read several media reports of foreign journalists being shadowed by plain clothes police who then used standover tactics to dissuade ordinary citizens from being interviewed.

Games officials are ecstatic that by removing a million vehicles from Beijing’s roads and shutting down dozens of factories, they have reduced the airborne particulate matter concentration to a mere three times that of recommended World Health Organisation  standards. They also proudly advise foreign journalists that there will be no blocking of Internet websites from within the Games media centre. But the irony of such concessions is probably lost on the more affluent members of the local populace who can afford to attend and are completely absorbed in nationalistic fervour.

And who are we to criticise anyway? Where else on the planet could such an economic transformation have taken place so rapidly? When the Chinese take on a project, they really commit! Our plodding Reserve Bank gnomes would send interest rates through the roof if New Zealand enjoyed even a miserable 4% GDP growth. But growth rates twice that are ensuring that China is rapidly making up for the previous half century of disengagement.

I could also name a few Western nations that haven’t exactly been shining examples of democratic freedom themselves lately. Bush’s swansong swipe at China’s human rights record was enormously hypocritical when you consider America’s appalling disregard for its poor and homeless, its record on air bombings of civilians and the suspension of civil rights for terror detainees.

The dragon is awakening and there is no question that China will rise to become the most powerful economic and military force we’ve ever seen. The recently signed free trade agreement between China and New Zealand may well be largely symbolic, but symbolism and relationship both mean a great deal to the Chinese. Furthermore, it is only through trade and dialogue that small nations can hope to influence change.

It’s Life Jim, But Not As We Know It!

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“Fire when ready”It’s not enough that we’ve had to suffer appalling weather lately. But now my week is going from bad to worse, and it’s only Tuesday!

My tribbles began when I found out at the weekend that my walking buddy has finally acquired herself a Betazoid boyfriend, which means I won’t be hearing from her for the next six weeks whilst she boldly embarks on an intergalactic lust quest with the new beau. Alas, shared coffees at Chaffers Marina and brisk walks around Oriental Bay quadrant will soon become a distant memory.

My grief was then compounded by the realisation that my poorly researched piece on “almost free software” may have caused some offence to software purists in the audience; when in fact I was attempting to acknowledge the important contributions made by both the Free Software movement and the Open Source community. Next time I shall stick to a topic I actually know something about. One good thing came out of it though. I received strict instructions on the correct etiquette to use when in the presence of the eminent Mr Stallman, when he favours us with a lecture and challenges us with his views on software copyright next month. Suitably armed, I should be able to keep my foot out of my mouth for a change. Puts a completely new spin on the term “software royalty”, doesn’t it?

Speaking of feet, to top it all off I discovered that my toes had succumbed to a dose of some unpleasant cling-ons that had obviously been lurking in the public showers at work last time I visited. It’s life Jim, but not as we know it! There was one piece of good news however. My enterprising little son has promised to save his pocket money up and buy me the new Star Trek fanzine and DVD for my birthday, bless his heart. Both Star Trek and the Free Software movement have sought to influence thinking and to bring about social change with advocacy, although through the use of different media. The Ferengi with their obsession on acquisition and profit would certainly not approve of this comparison however. Trekkies do have a few characteristics in common with Stallman followers…but let’s not go there.

Have a good week and in the words of an ancient Gorn proverb –  “may your three toes remain warm and dry”.

New ICT Body Kicks Off

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phoenix We seem to be awash in a sea of forums, networks, industry bodies and think tanks these days, all of whom have opinions on broadband and the state of the ICT industry. Will we ever get a consensus?

After a lengthy debacle, in which ICT industry players failed embarrassingly to score any goals, the government has stepped in with a solution that bundles the picked over carcass of ICT-NZ with that of the decapitated body of the Digital Strategy. Hopefully increased gate takings in the form of new digital sector funding and some firm direction from the game’s governing body can breath life into Digital Development New Zealand (DDNZ).

Minister Cunliffe announced that the new team will comprise a partnership between industry, community and voluntary groups and will focus on issues of national importance. In the meantime another more commercially oriented organisation has reportedly sprung Phoenix-like out of ITANZ. This group will also have representation at the table of the digital sector body as will TUANZ, NZCS, INZ, LGNZ and WIT – to mention but a few of the team members. A group of prominent business people and heavyweight telco players has also established the independent Broadband Industry Forum to channel ideas on scoring better broadband for New Zealand.

DDNZ is tasked with “providing policy advice and delivering on strategic goals”, although the groundsman has not yet set up the goalposts. I must admit that I’m also left back wondering how well DDNZ can actually function as a team, given the wide spectrum of views represented on its founding board and the lack of industry alignment in the past. Perhaps that’s why Fran Wilde has controversially been engaged to referee the council.  Wilde is a consumate political animal with a history of driving difficult projects forward. It may not matter that there is no consensus.

Notably absent from the DDNZ council are representatives of the academic community. Given the nature of comments on innovation by sports columnist Stuart Corson in a recent Unlimited article, I trust that these new bodies will move quickly to establish links into academia. Considering the absence of academics on New Zealand tech company boards, the shortage of technology graduates and the general paucity of informed debate on the broadband issue, it behoves the industry to finally substitute some representation from the university community onto the playing field. In my experience, contemplative intellectual types are generally the last people chosen to join sports teams. In this case it may prove to be a mistake.

Thank-You So Much for Waiting

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Why does it take a major telecommunications provider eight days to rectify a simple fault on a phone line in New Zealand? No. it’s not a bad joke, it really happened to me last week.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed there was a lot of background noise on my phone line. About the same time, my home office ADSL broadband began to get mighty slow. Eventually I lost all access to the Internet, although my phone remained working, but with even more noise. So I set about eliminating all the possible causes of the fault including swapping the router/modem, replacing the cabling and testing wall socket filters. No joy, so now it’s time to call the helpdesk.

Now when you call the helpdesk you first have to navigate the voice activated interface which (if it works) places you in a queue to speak to a real person. That’s fine, they play some cool Kiwi music that I like whilst I wait (Liam Finn, Anika Moa etc). Any moment I will get to speak to a technician who can resolve my fault – wrong. After a few minutes a lovely Filipina lady called Maria answers and we go through all the standard questions like, “have you turned your modem on and off?” She’s very polite, so I play along. When this fails to solve the problem she decides to put me on hold in order to speak to her supervisor. More music. After ten minutes in the holding pattern I realise she has lost the call.

Second attempt to call helpdesk, virtual receptionist then more music. Then I get a charming fellow from Manila called Arvin. He’s a bit more technically savvy and we talk about testing and swapping filters on all the wall jacks (I bought new filters and a very long cable in anticipation of this conversation). Still no luck. But Arvin agrees there is a line issue and kindly books me a service call with “Advanced Broadband” the division who actually fix the phone lines back in New Zealand. Next day I wait at home for the scheduled call. Nobody calls.

Then I have some meetings and don’t get to follow up. I use CafeNet in the city to check my email and do a bit of business online. Couple of days later I try again. Another call patched through to Manila and the same music whilst I hold. Another lovely lady re-books my technician call, “thank-you so much for waiting”, she chimes. But the technician again fails to call the following evening. Why is this is taking so long? I head off to bed tired and annoyed. The next day, an early helpdesk call, more holding music and then a very sleepy sounding night shift worker in the Manila call centre. We both manage to remain polite. He books me another service call. This time the technician calls as per the agreed schedule. The technician agrees there is a line fault (told you so) and promises to contact me when he is at the local exchange. He makes good on his promise and cheerily calls back to report that a small wire-end was loose at the exchange. Back in business.

So I guess my first question is: why does it take eight days, five phone calls and two hours of my valuable time to resolve a simple fault? Now to be clear, I received very polite and helpful service at all times from the call centre workers and the technician. The problem is the system and how it is managed. Outsourcing call centre work is a great way to lower costs, especially so given that recruiting locally is also getting harder. But if the helpdesk staff do not have authority to make any decisions it reduces their role to that of triage and placating the customer. Furthermore, when they do take action, better make damn sure that request is followed up locally or risk alienating the customer.

I have long maintained that broadband speed is not the issue in New Zealand. I can run my consulting business from home on 500kbs or 100Mbs line speed or anything in between. There are other more pressing problems like international connectivity. And as long as we have a monopolistic situation we risk the continued imposition of high prices and poor service levels for broadband. Bring on the competition.

My second question then is this: if it takes eight days to reconnect a loose wire, how long do you reckon it will take to build and support a nationwide fibre network?

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Epilogue of Enragement

gunmen

I don’t normally speak out on such issues, but I am growing tired of political correctness and can hold my tongue no longer. A father of three young children has died as a result of another armed robbery by three bandits in South Auckland. [Subsequent to first posting this article, an 80 year old Asian woman has been beaten to death in the same area and another Asian businesswoman intentionally run over and killed in a carpark.]

I hope Tapu Misa, who attempted to rubbish a recent controversial research paper by Greg Clydesdale on Polynesian social , educational and economic underperformance, will visit the family of the shot man and apologise for the way both Maori and Polynesians continue to be overrepresented in the violent crime, child abuse statistics and in the prison population. I hope she will explain the reasons why the adoption (by some) of L.A. style gangster culture has led to an increase in drug taking, teen promiscuity and gun ownership. 

I hope she will also write another editorial detailing why some members of her community feel they are somehow exempt from aspiring to contribute economically apart from in the colourful street markets of Otara or mopping toilet floors at nearby Auckland airport.

Clydesdale’s research was not anti-migrant and neither is my argument. The victim in this attack was a migrant, a family man who came to New Zealand and was prepared to work hard for a better life. His attackers were young Polynesian or Maori males probably born and raised locally. The issue here is that we are growing a brown underclass and nobody seems to want to talk about it nor acknowledge the likely downstream consequences for our society. If embarrassed government agencies try to shut down this discussion, how can we possibly find a solution?

Forget broadband or taxation. This is the real election issue debate we should be having because it impacts on our collective economic futures and our prospects for ongoing social cohesion – irrespective of our skin colour.

Why Email Must Die

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Talk about the death of email may still be a little premature. But the fact that some very high profile web entrepreneurs are even having this discussion is portentious.

When we think about the loss of productivity and the damage that has been wrought by bogus email and embedded nasties over the first fifteen or so years of existence of the Internet, it is surprising that nobody has entirely solved the problem of wayward emails. Even more surprising is that desktop software providers have retained email client applications within their offerings, because the writing is on the wall – email must die.

As long as email remains free of any cost, and networks are largely unfettered, there will always be some idiot quite happy to steal your address and use it as a proxy to send out a million ads for pharmaceuticals. The Internet has always been a double-edged sword in this respect. It offers huge potential to scale a business for both good and bad purposes.

So what are the alternatives to email and are they safe? When I set up my consulting business in 2002 I found an ISP that could both host my website and offer me a webmail service – great. I’ve never used Outlook since. What was not so great was that during 2007 my ISP had a major server meltdown and somehow managed to lose 5 years worth of my email. Had they not heard of system back-ups? Fortunately I have heard of backing up and had long sent all my active mail and a list of email addresses to a separate account. So the loss was minimal, but the nuisance factor was considerable.

That episode got me thinking about how trustworthy all sorts of hosted applications and automated services really are. Banking, sharemarket, any e-commerce or eftpos transaction, even this blogsite…we trust that the provider has sufficient resource in place to deal with our precious data. But how can we really be sure? When we consider where email is likely to go in the future, there is still some cause for concern.

Some young people don’t even use regular email any more. Why would you do so when you can create your own social network online and be specific about who you choose to invite aboard? It is surely only a matter of time before someone builds a really useful networking site targetted at enterprise. Gmail is great and I have to admit I have yet to see a single piece of spam through my Gmail account. So why can’t I have a secure, low cost Gmail style hosted email system that only lets in only those who I invite but which can be personalised to fit my business brand?

 Bookhabit Authors Competition – Last Orders Please

Speaking of leveraging the Internet for good purposes, we are entering the last weeks of the Bookhabit.com authors competition. Know any budding authors out there? Have them upload their unpublished work onto the site in time for a crack at $5,000 in prize money. Popular selections from each week go forward to the final panel. For readers there are now over two hundred e-books to choose from, selling for as little as $2.50. Bookhabit is further evidence of how the Internet is continuing to change the way we live our lives and that a sensible idea well executed is worth a great deal indeed. Enjoy!

The Great Wall

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It’s hard to separate last week’s contrasting media images of scuffles by pro-Tibet protesters from those of a proud NZ government delegation kowtowing to the beaming Chinese trade mandarins. So does anyone really believe that the freshly inked free trade agreement (FTA) will bring a flood of economic opportunities to the doorstep of the average New Zealander? China’s determination to protect the image of the Olympic flame at the cost of other nations’ sovereignty is instructive. They built the Great Wall for a reason didn’t they?

I’m not surprised that details of the agreement were kept under wraps until the day of the signing ceremony, some of the concessions made are real shockers. For starters the dairy products component is phased in over 10 years and China even then has an ejection seat clause should they decide that their own dairy industry is threatened. Estimates of the dollar value benefit for New Zealand vary, but appear to be in the vicinity of $200 million per annum, which frankly seems like peanuts in the face of a massive $3.7 billion trade deficit.

Secondly, since when did an FTA ever proscribe rules on migrant labour? “Working holiday” and general category visas for sought after trades are to be broadened immediately for Chinese entering NZ, but there is no reciprocity. Not that I would want to live and work in the most polluted nation on Earth, but tell me how this is fair. However, I look forward to reports of a flood of highly experienced plumbers, hotel chefs and software developers gushing forth from China eager to plug critical gaps in our labour force. The Qualifications Authority will have a field day navigating the rules on equivalency. Given the number of migrant doctors, lawyers and university professors already prowling Queen Street in taxis, one has to wonder where this new influx will actually end up.

So at first glance the FTA looks a bit like it was cobbled together rather more with a sense of urgency than any overriding economic logic. But wait there’s more! It turns out that, having already signed the agreement, our parliamentarians now finally get the chance to discuss it in Select Committee and debate it in The House. What happens if the bill doesn’ t pass? What if the weight of public submissions is against the Bill? Talk about potential for losing face.

The FTA is certainly a historic document and I agree that it will open other doors in the future and (probably) bring a net gain in export trade value to New Zealand, as advertised. As well, a ratchet clause levels the playing field if any other nation negotiates a better deal, therefore going first is not neccessarily a disadvantage. And if the WTO round falls flat, it is highly likely that APEC will set about developing a regional FTA that will now have to favourably include New Zealand. So perhaps I’m being a little unfair. The FTA seems very much like a strategic neccessity. But in our haste to supplicate Beijing could we have possibly overlooked too much detail?

On the technology front, the Prime Minister has curiously fingered software exports to China as a growth opportunity for New Zealand under the FTA. But industry leaders have indicated that the ICT sector is not thinking that way at all. Unless the FTA somehow enshrines and guarantees the protection of intellectual property, China is about the last place I’d be wanting to export software to right now. So if our much hyped knowledge based goods and services are out of the equation, that just leaves us with flogging dairy commodities to China’s burgeoning middle classes. Great stuff, but how can I personally share in that opportunity? Oh right – Fonterra still hasn’t gotten around to listing – bugger!

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New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has an informational website and seminar events planned on the topic of trade opportunities with China. Key outcomes of the FTA can be found here.

What if Google Ruled the World?

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The debate over Google Knol vs Wikipedia continues to rage unabated before Knol has even been launched. But the real issue is the gradual spread of Google’s tentacles.

Google have clearly signalled their intent to drive new revenue streams from owning online content. And what better way to quickly build up a rich cache of material than to invade Wikipedia’s domain? But Knol differs from Wikipedia in that the focus is on authorship, so it’s more like a blog/wiki mashup.

Wikipedia is a wonderful project, but it has always suffered from a credibility gap. With crowd-sourced content we can never be certain where the boundary between truth and folklore lies. Knol addresses that to a certain extent through the use of accredited subject matter experts. How much editorial influence will be vested in individual users is not clear at this stage.

Some commentators have already predicted a disturbing dystopian future in which “content and advertising become indistinguishable”. But in the “co-production economy” I thought we were supposed to be able to subvert and avoid vested interests and traditional media?

But there is another important principle at stake here. If Google both owns the content and controls the search hierarchy, that seems like a great deal of power to concentrate in the hands of a single corporation. Will Google rise to be the most powerful media outlet in say another ten years? In war, the victor gets to rewrite history. That’s a concern here too.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft is again making serious overtures to Yahoo. (Microsoft’s new CFO, ex-pat New Zealander Chris Lidell, is rumoured to be driving the purchase proposal.) MS clearly needs to shore up its offering in the face of Google’s incessant assault on its patch. We will probably end up with an online content and advertising duopoly. Either way, the dim flame of unfettered “citizen journalism” and freedom from vested corporate interests is likely to be snuffed out. Webstockers might like to chew over this possibility whilst they dine out at Google’s expense this week.

ICT Minister Pulls out Plum from Pre-Xmas Pudding

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Way back in August I wrote about the difficulties being faced by those charged with developing a unifying industry body for the ICT sector and I predicted that ICT-NZ might continue to struggle to gain traction.

Last week Communications and Information Technology Minister David Cunliffe drove the final nail into the coffin of ICT-NZ by announcing the establishment of an ICT industry super body that will also mop up whatever remains of the Digital Strategy funding pool. No doubt this move will provide fuel for conversation over the tea cups at this week’s Digital Summit. At the very least the industry should feel slightly chastened that the Minister himself has had to intervene to find a solution.

The structure and governance arrangements for the new body will be critical to its success. Without proper buy-in from key industry players it will be doomed to circle like a rudder-less ship on a stormy political sea, just like its predecessor. It will also be neccessary for it to articulate a much clearer value proposition to potential members and partners.

Having the government facilitate and partially fund such a body is a departure from the accepted wisdom generally promoted by the economic development ministry however. The ministry has been opposed to public funding of industry networks for quite some time, although the intellectual rationale behind this thinking has never been made clear.

So the government will certainly want a payback on its investment and the new body is expected to provide sectorial advice, be involved in research and manage the Digital Strategy programme. Precisely how industry growth issues will be tackled has yet to be announced.

On balance this is a good outcome. It creates the opportunity for a fresh start and cements government committment to having ICT as a central plank in economic development. But the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.