Curran Clare: Electronic Data Safety Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Electronic Data Safety Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2398. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Can I lament the lackadaisical ill-informed shallow response from the Government members on this bill. I could have used stronger words but can I lament and say and predict that they will rue the day they made them given the very strong likelihood of further significant data breaches and mismanagement of IT projects going forward and how important this is. Really this bill was quite simple. It created a mechanism that would have been an arm’s-length approach to a really important and significant issue. It really would not have cost very much to provide more confidence surety and trust across New Zealand across our public sector and across Parliament around IT issues which I would have thought was an important matter in 2015 in the current environment. I mean the New Zealand Parliament cannot even get its own IT right and has no resilience in its system. This is largely as a result of a systemic underfunded approach. If you look at that as a microcosm of what is happening across the public sector generally you would think that we would be treating this with a bit more seriousness.I want in my closing remarks not to focus on the puerile responses from across the House but actually to just point to some real life examples and some ones that are happening right now and are of real seriousness and significance. I am pleased to see that the Attorney-General is sitting in the House. He might be actually listening to some of these.Last year there was a project undertaken around the number of computers across Government agencies—whether they are departments or agencies including health boards—that still had a software programme on them that had run out of date and was no longer being supported. The programme was called Windows XP. I undertook that project because it had been pointed out to me by a number of significant people in the tech industry how important it was for the public sector to not have holes in its IT programmes and be unsupported. I did that and eventually I discovered after a lot of effort that there were more than 40000 computers still on Windows XP and that the cost was well in excess of $1 million for extended support from Microsoft and some of them were not actually being supported. The risk that poses to New Zealand and our public sector—and this is just one example—is quite significant. There are exponential risks beyond that currently operating right now in our public sector including a number of public-facing computer systems that people go and use every day that have great big gaping holes in them—great big gaping holes. This will come to light. I have warned the Government. I have asked questions of the Minister of Internal Affairs today about it—deny deny deny. He said there was no issue.A special commission of inquiry into this would have created a responsible arm’s length approach. It has the support of most of Parliament; it should have the support of the whole of Parliament. It is not a big deal—$4 million versus $45 million to fix Novopay and $130 million of extra spending on the Inland Revenue Department system. This is shameful it is wrong and it is irresponsible. It is just frankly irresponsible for the Government not to take this approach when we cannot even get our own IT right in our offices in our own Parliament. There is no resilience. There is no back-up system. Why can we not do it across the Government and take a proper approach to this? Not supporting this bill is just quite frankly irresponsible.