Setting the tone for the priorities and thorniest challenges Digital and CX professionals are facing.

Setting the tone for the priorities and thorniest challenges Tech and Data professionals are facing.

• The 2026-2028 requirements for an accessible NZ public service – how do we ensure that digital transformation doesn’t leave vulnerable communities behind
• Focusing on needs and feedback-driven innovation that leverages insights to understand diverse needs
• Putting the citizen first – using co-design to identify what needs solving to better deliver more inclusive digital services
• How can we best use technology to engage with (and improve accessibility for) the different communities and cohorts across our nation

How do you modernise a critical public service for the digital age without compromising trust, resilience or regulatory rigour? In this keynote, Transpower New Zealand and OSF Digital share the story of how the national grid operator transformed its stakeholder engagement and operational agility using Salesforce. From consolidating legacy systems into a unified cloud platform to piloting AI-powered agents with Agentforce, this session explores how Transpower embedded data, automation and trust into the heart of its transformation. Attendees will gain practical insights into modernising systems, improving responsiveness, and delivering transparent, citizen-centred services in a complex public sector environment.

People move through life events, not org charts. This panel looks at how we can design integration around real journeys and shared outcomes.

• How do we ascertain what really matters, and to whom, when we set out to integrate services
• How might a common experience for accessing services look across our government, as opposed to lots of seperate agency branding
• The potential for terms and conditions that cross agency boundaries and encourage collaboration - How might employees moving between agencies act as a way to engage retention that offers career progression, talent management, succession, and removal of silos

Karl Le Quesne

Chief Electoral Officer, Electoral Commission

Kate Tibbitts

Chief People Officer, Te Pūmanawa Tāngata - Human Resources, Victoria University of Wellington

Kate King

Manager, Digital Design, Ministry of Justice

Tess Bullen

Digital Strategy Practitioner, Department of Internal Affairs

Rebecca Lennon

Group Sales Lead, Spark New Zealand Trading Limited

Sovereignty is often used loosely, this panel defines practical approaches to data, identity, and platforms.  

• AI literacy and confidence - what does the term ‘sovereignty’ actually mean
• Who gets to decide how data is managed, stored and accessed, particularly under Te Tiriti
• What are the things we need to think about when it comes to self determination over our own technology and data in NZ - should we be shifting away from using international clouds
• Legally privileged information - what happens if we input this into cloud systems

Jan Sheppard

Chief Data and Analytics Officer, PHF Science

Tracy Parsons

Chief Data Officer, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Mike Mulvaney

Chief Technology Officer, Crown Law

Michelle Burke

Former Director of Knowledge and Information Management, Reserve Bank of New Zealand

Leighton Gosnell

Data Practice Lead, Adaptiv

As Aotearoa’s public sector faces sustained fiscal pressure, rising citizen expectations, and the accelerating impact of AI, the next phase of digital government is less about new platforms and more about how trusted foundations are connected and reused at scale.

In this keynote, David Peacock will explore how four core digital foundations — digital identity, citizen wallets and the Government App, modern payments, and data insights — can work together to deliver tangible outcomes for government. Drawing on New Zealand examples and global best practice, the session will highlight how trusted identity enables adoption, wallets enable service completion, payments enable integrity, and data enables better policy decisions.

The keynote will focus on practical implications for government leaders, including improving service completion rates, reducing administrative cost and leakage, strengthening trust and privacy, and enabling evidence‑based decision‑making — all while preparing agencies for an increasingly automated and AI‑enabled future.

• Māori perspectives on sovereignty, stewardship and digital trust
• Fostering long-term thinking into departmental culture to achieve a greater level of integrity in data sharing and service design
• Ensuring co-design is not just consultation, but true partnership within departments and service delivery at large
• How indigenous knowledge can strengthen innovation outcomes for all citizens, and across all of government
• Mātauranga Māori as an applicable perspective for navigating unexpected transitions, the era of AI and digital transformation, and inevitable change

Many organisations are changing the way they work, whether through product or agile approaches to delivering system change. The relationships between teams and underlying processes need to change and be aligned to make this work. This is further complicated by the introduction of AI, cloud-based platforms, and the need to modernise legacy systems.

In this session, NZ Police will unpack their Community of Practice established for agile delivery, which includes integrated planning with architecture to meet these challenges and deliver more effective information services that support our Police on the frontline.