Curran Clare: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: General Debate[Sitting date: 25 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18881. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):A Labour Government will transform the New Zealand economy into a higher-value and higher-income economy through higher investment innovation and industry development. But it will do more than that—it will actually transform our nation into a tech-savvy nation. But in order to do that it has to tackle the technology issues that exist within our own public sector. It might interest members on the other side to hear that Government agencies are significant users of information and communications technology products and services. They are a direct employer of skilled workers in information and communications technology and a customer of local product markets. Government purchasing in New Zealand makes up almost 15 percent of GDP—15 percent of GDP. That is significant.It is the Labour Party’s view that there are many huge costly IT projects inside the Government. They often go badly and it results in vast sums of money going offshore. Departments are secretive about their technology products and they do not share them even with other departments. Historically the willingness of Governments to adopt proprietary software has enabled various vendor monopolies within Government IT and there are significant issues emerging around this that are impacting on our Government and the way that we operate but it is also being seen across the world particularly with the countries with which we do a lot of business. Citizens businesses and delivery partners such as charities and voluntary groups need to be able to interact with Government officials sharing and editing documents. Officials within Government departments also need to be able to work efficiently and to share and collaborate.It is also the Labour Party’s view that the one-size-fits-all approach to public sector procurement and build processes is fundamentally flawed. It costs this country millions of dollars every year in failed software projects robbing us of the chance to be a world leader in the development of innovative public sector products. All I have to do is mention Novopay. More than 2000 schools are still struggling to deal with this dilapidated system. There is more than $9.3 million in debts to recover and ongoing errors are still creating hundreds of thousands of dollars in new debt. As for the Inland Revenue Department project we have a Government that is demanding that IT contractors be massive and slow moving. Even the former Minister of Revenue Peter Dunne has got problems with the way that the procurement processes have occurred—$1.5 billion. These are things that we have serious concerns about and it is not just us who have serious concerns about it.Interestingly apart from the wider sector which has serious concerns the New Zealand Productivity Commission also has concerns. Last week it released its latest report and in it were some damning findings about the lack of integration within the Government on information and communications technology policy to do with regulatory issues and to do with Government information and communications technology purchases. It referred to siloed thinking in Government departments a lack of coordination and regulation being introduced without regard for economic impact. That is very interesting because it even made a recommendation that said as a matter of promoting good policy advice that “The Treasury the State Services Commission and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet should ensure that the design of regulations that significantly affects the adoption of ICT by firms takes comprehensive account of costs and benefits.” If that does not tell you that you have got problems then I do not know what does.The biggest problem here is the lack of leadership. There is a lack of leadership and a lack of vision on that side of the House around tackling these very important things. This report went on to say that “knowledge spill-overs from Government ICT procurement are only likely to have value if the Government is at the leading edge of ICT adoption.”—which it says it is not—“On the contrary the technologies that government agencies use are often older than those used in the private sector. For example some agencies continued to use Windows XP long after it has been superseded by more recent versions and right up till security support was withdrawn by Microsoft.” That was in April this year. There are nearly 20000 Government computers being used without security support at this point.