Dunne to attend 3rd D5 conference in South Korea

Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne will represent New Zealand at the 3rd meeting of the D5 Digital Leaders’ Summit in Busan, South Korea 10-12 November 2016. The theme of the summit is “Leading Digital Innovation”, where New Zealand has a particularly good story to tell.

The D5 is a grouping of five nations–New Zealand, United Kingdom, South Korea, Estonia and Israel – considered amongst the most advanced in the provision of on-line government services. Its establishment is a British Government initiative and this is the third meeting of this group following the inaugural summit held in London in December 2014, also attended by Mr Dunne.

“New Zealand is well placed in playing its part in this grouping – it is already government policy here to be achieving 70 per cent of New Zealanders’ most common interactions with government online by 2017, and we are keen to both share our experiences and learn from others.

“While all this will be routine for those directly involved in the ICT world, the challenge of digital transformation is to ensure it resonates with the average citizen. It cannot just be about system upgrades; it has to demonstrate a positive, specific and noticeable benefit to the individual to be sustainable”, says Mr Dunne,

One such demonstration in the New Zealand context is that Internal Affairs have renewed nearly 706,000 adult passports online since the November 2012 launch of the service and this has now been extended to provide first time adult applications, child passport renewal, and urgent applications. This has been made possible with first time adult passport applicants using a RealMe verified identity.

“We also recognise the key times in people’s lives when they need to interact with government, including when a child is born or at retirement. To this end we are about to launch the first of our life-event based integrated digital services. SmartStart will make it easier for new and expectant parents to access government support and services online. SmartStart is a digital tool that presents information for new parents from five government agencies, plus Midwives and Plunket, in an easy-to-understand timeline that is personalised for each person”, Mr Dunne said.

At the conclusion of the summit, Mr Dunne will sign on behalf of New Zealand the ‘Busan Declaration’, reaffirming the efforts of the existing D5-member countries to strengthen cooperation in the field of digital government among members and with the international community.