2020 report from the Chair

Kia ora koutou.

Looking back at last year's report, I started with remarking that 2019 was a "strange year"... wow, little did I know what was coming.

Among other things, this year, we're going from a President's report to a Chair(person)'s report. And (spoiler alert) it only gets wackier. 

This year, amazingly, two of our historical problems stopped being problems: 

NZOSS response to MBIE proposal to extend Government Procurement rules.

We have taken the opportunity to respond to MBIEs discussion document on ‘Extending the Government Procurement Rules to government entities in the New Zealand public sector’. At present the Government Procurement rules are mandatory for around 135 entities in the Government and State Services and are recommended for the rest of the State and Public Sector including around 2,400 School boards and all of the district and regional councils plus a lot of other sundry organisations.

Our response is NO, this is not a good idea as the Procurement Rules for IT have not had the desired effect and have limited competition and innovation to a small number of players bound primarily to a single overseas vendor. We have proposed that the Rules remain as recommended guidance and that more attention is paid to ensuring that the desired better outcomes for Māori, Pasifika,regional businesses, and social enterprises mentioned in the document actually occurs.

What New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern means by developing an "open source" app for COVID-19 contact tracing with Singapore

In today's press conference, the Prime Minister mentioned that the New Zealand government is expressing interest in collaborating with Singapore while they "open source" their COVID-19 contact tracing app that's Bluetooth-enabled.

What does "open source" mean? And why is it important?

LCA2019 - Day 3

And it's the last day of LCA2019. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. It has been a fantastic three (or five) days with lots of great presentations and other conversations. I've been to lots of conferences over the years but none of them have the positive vibe that LCA has.