Advocacy is hard. This time it worked.

There’s a lot of myth and mystery around advocacy. People often imagine it’s about slick meetings with Ministers or bold public statements that change the world overnight. Sometimes that happens. But more often than not, advocacy looks like this: Lots of letter writing. Submissions. Quiet background conversations. Turning up to meetings that might go nowhere. Planting seeds you’re not sure will ever grow. And doing it over, and over, and over again.

I've been at this for a while. Most of the time, it feels like banging my head against a brick wall that won’t budge. But occasionally, something moves—and today, something did.

Electrotechnology

If you’ve been following our work on vocational education reform, you’ll know that the original Industry Skills Board (ISB) coverage plan didn’t include digital technologies as its own industry. It was a glaring omission. We raised concerns in this blog post, made a submission, and kept talking to whoever would listen. We weren’t the only ones—many of you amplified the message and shared the impact this would have on our future workforce. Other “future-focused” industries were also doing the same.

This week, the Government released its revised ISB coverage—and digital technologies are in! Yay! We’ve been included under a new grouping called Electrotechnology, alongside other future-focused technical fields. You can read the announcement here. It’s not perfect, but it’s a fantastic start, we have a mandate now for industry led education models, to create apprenticeships and cadetships, improve pathways from education to employment and outcomes for learners.

Importantly this is a clear sign that when we speak up together, we can make change happen.

Why does this matter? Because workforce pathways don’t build themselves. They need funding, visibility, coordination—and recognition that digital technology is a vital part of Aotearoa’s future economy. Getting digital tech acknowledged as an industry helps unlock all of that.

So if you’ve ever wondered whether advocacy makes a difference—it can. Not every time, but sometimes. And those moments matter.