Advocacy

One of ITP's key functions is to provide independent advice to Government on behalf of the tech professional community, both at ministerial and official levels.

IT Professionals New Zealand meets regularly with relevant ministers and senior government officials across a very broad range of portfolios and initiatives. This includes both regular scheduled meetings with ministers (eg quarterly) as well as one-off meetings were necessary.

This page outlines some of the larger recent engagements with Government.

  • ITP has been leading the development of the Digital Technologies curriculum and achievement standards in school for a long time, directly leading to the new Digital Technologies Achievement Standards and reviews that have led to redevelopment of the digital technologies curriculum.

    This started with ITP (then NZCS) conducting a detailed investigation and report into the Achievement Standards available to teach computing in schools in 2008, which found "serious and significant failings" with the generic standards then in place.

    ITP went on to form the Digital Technologies Expert Panel with the Ministry of Education and helped develop the new Digital Technologies Achievement Standards in 2011-2013. More recently, ITP was involved in the year-long Ministry of Education review of the content and positioning of Digital Technologies in schools in 2015, and is now part of the Digital Technologies Reference Group overseeing changes as a result of that review.

    ITP also runs Tah Rua Toru Tech

  • ITP is a founding member of the NZ Digital Skills Forum, a partnership between the tech sector represented by IT Professionals NZ and vendor bodies NZTech and NZRise, and Government represented by MBIE (Skills and Employment Policy, Digital Economy, and Immigration NZ areas), Ministry of Education, Tertiary Education Commission, the office of the Govt CIO, Dept of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and others as necessary.

    The Forum meets regularly and has created a single point of engagement for industry/Govt collaboration on skills issues. The work of the Forum is achieved via four Working Groups: Education (chaired by ITP CEO Paul Matthews), Professional Pathways (chaired by ITP member Paul Ramsay), Immigration, and Data and Evidence.

  • ITP is leading a partnership of 10 tech groups working to rebalance the low rate of research funding for IT-related fields. This included an analysis of the proportion of IT and computing-related research awarded by the Marsden Fund, New Zealand's $54M government-funded "blue skies" research fund. The findings were submitted to a review of the fund.

    The review found:

    • Just 17% of funding approvals for the combined maths and tech-related areas goes to tech-related research. This means around 4 maths-related research applications are approved per tech-related research application in NZ. This compared with 50%+ in other countries such as Australia.

    • On average the Marsden Fund funds around 1.5 research projects a year in tech fields, compared with an average of 46.5 a year by Australia's equivalent Discovery Fund.

    • The tech-related research community (based on PBRF assessments) makes up around 60% of the size of the combined tech and maths research community. While the number of top (A-ranked) researchers is smaller - around 35% of the combined area - this is still double the actual proportion of funding that goes to tech research vs maths.

    • The apparent bias is probably due to the structure of the fund, which combines maths and stats with tech-related areas such as Computer Science, Information Systems and Software Engineering in one panel. The panel decides which research applications progress and is generally made up of 2/3 maths and statistics researchers and only 1/3 or fewer computer science researchers.

    With the tech-related research community missing out on 10s of millions in research dollars over the last decade, ITP is calling for the Maths and Information Sciences (MIS) panel to be split into two panels, one focusing specifically on tech-related research.

  • IT Professionals NZ is the co-developer of all sub-degree ICT qualifications in New Zealand, in partnership with NZQA's Qualification Services.

    This means ITP is responsible for the creation and development of all computing and IT-related diplomas and certificates in New Zealand on the NZ Qualifications Framework at levels 1-6, delivered by Institutes of Technology, Polytechnics, and Private Training Establishments.

    ITP began the role by co-leading (with NZQA) a review of all sub-degree qualifications in New Zealand in 2013 and 2014. Following extensive industry consultation, this resulted in the de-listing of all 224 existing computing-related diplomas and certificates, replaced by a landscape of 14 new qualifications with evidenced industry need and pathways. These were approved in April 2015, and most of the old qualifications are unavailable from 2017.

  • TP meets with the Minister of Internal Affairs as well as the Government CIO's office within the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) on a very regular basis to discuss matters related to Government's internal tech transformation agenda, procurement, security, open government and much more.

    This is part of a broader piece of work, with ITP providing free and frank independent advice on modernisation of Government services.

  • The Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) has responsibility for prioritising and funding tertiary education in New Zealand. ITP meets with TEC senior officials on a regular basis to discuss prioritisation of tech-related education, given the industry demand in New Zealand.

    ITP also discusses related activities with TEC, such as the ICT Graduate Schools