Communicating Risk and Mitigating Threats in a Changing Cyber Security Landscape

“There is a direct financial benefit of good security practice at the customer interface, a rapid response program of how to deal with cyber events, and a quick clean-up action. Suddenly it becomes very clear that investment in your cyber security practice becomes financially understood and a viable action.

Data Visualisation and Dashboards Techniques

As an example, many people will know the colours of Google even if they don’t see the word spelled out, and they will know the font of Disney even if it is used to write something else. A lot of these kinds of brands are ingrained in our minds because they use all four elements and because “everything that we consume visually makes use of those well-known attributes within our brains.” In an organisation like the Inland Revenue Department there are four factors that have been included in the style guide, “though more elements can be added in there.” These …

Securing the Cloud

““It’s important to note that we are provider agnostic. We will work with anybody who’s prepared to support the government to achieve its digital aspirations and ultimately its outcomes and results for New Zealanders.”” Adrienne Moor, Lead, The Government Cloud Programme, Department of Internal Affairs “The continued investment in New Zealand by global cloud providers is delivering strong and positive support for New Zealand’s digital maturity. At the same time, agencies have varying needs, so the need and the flexibility of the cloud solutions need to be able to reflect and enable what is required in their different contexts for …

Architecting the Future Smart City

Cities and regions all over the world need to continually adapt to keep up with technology and with the expectations of their citizens. In New Zealand, given the size of the country and the spread of the population, there are significant differences and challenges between the largest cities and the smallest regions. Wellington is the capital and one of the largest cities. “People said that we were absolutely mad to go down the Zealandia journey, but now we’re doing something even more extraordinary, which is to try and get rid of predators from across the entire city. No major urban …

Scaling, Digitising & Maturing NZ Public Sector Shared Services

The goal of any business, particularly a large-scale operation, is to be as efficient as possible, delivering the best possible services whilst expending the least number of resources, thereby maximising profit. For large institutions with long histories, changing behaviours and becoming more efficient is often particularly difficult. But not impossible. However, like every organisation of significant size, there are constant roadblocks. The finance team, in particular, they are constantly involved in “firefighting, managing our backlogs, solving problems, and coaching our people to be more efficient, though there’s never enough time to actually develop our people.” The goal of course is …

Understanding the Impact of Covid-19 on NZ Public Sector Procurement

In procurement circles, people often “use the terms SRM and contract management interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.” Contract management is all about delivering the services or goods outlined in the contract. In many cases, this is procurement 101. SRM however is “about generating new value that goes beyond what’s written in a contract.” It is about performance and relationship management and “if we focus on that, then we will see value generated through continuous improvement and innovation over time.” This is particularly relevant now because, after events like “earthquakes, floods, security threats, and COVID-19, there is a …

Integrating and Stabilising Platforms to Leverage Future Data, Analytics & AI Capabilities

We want to support the innovation and co-creation of services and experiences for students by creating distinctive, equitable, accessible, culturally attuned and user-shaped experiences across the university. Director of Planning and Information, University of Auckland The second section, as stated earlier, is about using data for the benefit of students. This realisation crystallised during the height of COVID-19, when some students continued to engage with the campus, even whilst the majority of students and staff were at home. “We wanted to understand who was on campus, who wasn’t, and who needed extra support.” Prototypes for understanding student engagement “were rapidly …

IoT in the Public Sector

Essentially the document and the plan have “five priority areas: institutions and governance; infrastructure funding and pricing; housing affordability and supply; climate change, resilience and the environment; and technology change and our digital future.” Although technology is listed separately, in many ways it “runs across all of the priorities, and adapting to technology is essential to lowering costs, improving services and improving infrastructure delivery.” The problem however – which in some ways is a good problem to have – is that “we’re laying down assets that have very long lifespans.” Some are “more than generational, like some of our water …