Address to the Third National Digital Forum

It is a great privilege to open the third National Digital Forum.

I commend the leadership and support of the Forum provided by Archives New Zealand, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa), and the National Library of New Zealand.

I welcome the support of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the Ministry of Education as partners for the first time at the 2004 Forum.

The Forum¡¯s vision is to achieve the co-operative development, delivery, and preservation of high quality digital resources that reflect the natural and cultural heritage of Aotearoa New Zealand. It is about giving New Zealanders continuity of access to our national memory bank. Politicians know that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

The purpose of the Forum is to encourage, support, and promote a national, cooperative, bicultural, and cross-sectoral approach to enhancing access to natural and cultural heritage resources online.

Now that is quite a mouthful. It is also an extremely important task. We are living in a time where the growth of information and communication technologies presents us with an incredible opportunity to capture our cultural heritage and share that among ourselves and with others.

Today we want to push for a new kind of memory; not ROM or RAM but NAM (National Access to Memory) or NZ Online for the people, by the people. A digital democracy based on digital self-identity. In short, we must create in cyberspace what we are building in the physical space ¨C a distinctive, high-quality, endemic brand for New Zealand that reflects back to all our people who we are, and underscore what we can offer to the world.

Globalisation is a fact, not a philosophy. In terms of accessing and exchanging information, the planet's timescale has shrunk from weeks to seconds in little more than a century. This is particularly important for a small relatively far-away country such as New Zealand.

What counts is how we respond to these new challenges and opportunities ¨C the new ways of capturing information, our heritage, our stories, our art, our music. While it is getting easier to share that information still too much is lost, and too many of our people are cut off from these taonga through lack of connection, lack of capability to use, or lack of appropriate content to see online.

The digital strategy and its links with the Forum

Early this year I released the government's draft digital strategy. The digital strategy shares a synergy with the objectives of the forum. Many of your sponsors have played a key role in the drafting of it.

The strategy is a whole of government initiative that provides a unifying framework to guide and coordinate our ICT policy and actions over the next four years.

The government's vision is that New Zealand will be a world leader at using information and technology to realise our economic, social and cultural goals. Essentially, we want a seamless ¡°information society¡±.

For that to happen three interrelated areas of action are required. We need:

• Content - the right information in digital format. We want universal access to the nation's memory banks: "National Access to Memory"
• Confidence and capability ¨C the skills to use ICT effectively, safely and creatively; and
• Connection ¨C affordable access to ICT infrastructure. We want all of NZ Online.

We know that to get the maximum gains out of innovative information and communication technologies, we need everyone on board. We know that we need a suitable telecommunications infrastructure and we know that we need good, high quality and relevant information available in digital form.

There has been widespread support for the digital strategy¡¯s recognition that coordinated action in those three interrelated areas ¨C content, connection, and capability ¨C is necessary to establish the right environment for a confident uptake of ICTs by government, business and communities. Internationally it's at the core of thinking by the WSIS. And within government it's the light bulb that's flashed on above all of our collective heads. The Digital Strategy provides us with a framework for coordinating those actions and a vision for making New Zealand a world leader in its use of ICT.

I want to see all communities accessing information online and then being able to add to that information stock.

I want to see mums and dads showing their children how to use their computers, or marae-based information centres that could be used as homework centres, for example.

And I want to see children accessing the Internet to find information for their homework in a safe and secure electronic environment. That does not include underage access to predatory chat rooms. We must all be able to use ICTs safely, confidently and capably.

Rooted deeply in tikanga Maori, we want to centre ourselves as the ICT hub of the South Pacific. This is our part of the world we are ¡®home¡¯ to the people of many island nations. As part of the e-Pasifika strand of the digital strategy we are interested in enabling Pacific peoples to ¡®switch on¡¯ to the new technologies. We want to make sure that globalisation doesn¡¯t mean homogenisation.

Even as the strategy is being finalised, its principles are being put into
effect.

To increase access we have created an Internet portal giving the public access to all government and local government sites. Nationwide initiatives include Project PROBE, which will extend broadband capacity to rural schools and communities, Senior Net and the Tertiary E-learning Framework.

On the high-speed network side, my colleague, Hon Pete Hodgson is leading the development of an Advanced Research Network for the Research, Higher Education and Innovation sectors. I would expect that the installation of GigaPops (fibre optic connection to the backbone network at 1gigabit per sec or more) will in turn help spur the development and use of broadband services and allow greater real-time international research capability.

To assist with training the government is funding school and community ICT learning programmes, and digital opportunity pilot programmes in the Far North ¨C in Auckland's Pacific Island communities - in Gisborne and Wairoa -in Gore -wherever the need exists.

To increase security and usability the Internet Safety Group has been established, largely with Ministry of Education funding. I am also working on legislation to combat SPAM.

At a more basic infrastructural level we passed the Telecommunications Act in 2001. The Act is the cornerstone of our telecommunications policy because it establishes mechanisms that will deliver results not only now, but in the future. The purpose of the Act is to promote competition in telecommunications markets for the long-term benefit of end-users.

It represents a significant strengthening of the regulatory framework from the previous reliance on general competition law, including an important shift from a general to a consumer-oriented welfare test.

One of the key pillars of the Act is the establishment of a Telecommunications Commissioner within the Commerce Commission, an independent regulatory authority.

The role of the Act is important because there is no point in having rich content on line if no one can access fast and cheap enough broadband to make it readily accessible. The effectiveness of the Act has been demonstrated by recent lowering of prices for broadband following the government's decision to accept the Telecommunications commissioner's recommendation to regulate some of Telecom's services.

While a lot has been achieved there is still plenty of work to be done, and on the content side it is good to have the forum to assist. Indeed, it has already contributed by undertaking a number of collaborative initiatives:

• It has established a National Digital Forum website (http://ndf.natlib.govt.nz) ¨C which provides information on Forum activities, and information resources and toolkits for organisations engaging in digitisation activities.
• The website also includes the New Zealand Register of Digitisation Initiatives (RoDI) ¨C which contains basic information about digitisation initiatives that are based in New Zealand or that relate to New Zealand topics, and provides the opportunity for organisations to identify opportunities for collaboration or learning.
• It has also set up Matapihi: Open the Window ¨C which provides a window onto the online collections of a number of New Zealand cultural organisations.

  The development of Matapihi demonstrates what can be achieved through cross-sector collaboration towards the goal of providing access to New Zealand collections and taonga online for audiences across New Zealand and internationally.

  Matapihi, launched in September 2004, provides free access to almost 50,000 images, sounds and objects from the digital collections of the National Library¡¯s Alexander Turnbull Library, the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o T¨¡maki, Auckland City Libraries, Christchurch City Libraries and the Otago Museum.

  The potential of Matapihi was recognised with its winning of the Cr¨¨me de la Cr¨¨me Innovation award in the 2004 TUANZ (e)-vision Awards.

  Future challenges for the forum

  The forum recognises that "Content is King" and has acknowledged the challenges associated with unlocking the social, cultural, and economic value of New Zealand content.

  There is a wealth of content in New Zealand, but only some of it is available digitally, and much of it is hard to find.

  Our goals are shared in that we want New Zealanders to be able to access digitally much of the content that is in the public domain, be empowered to use it to create new value, and to contribute new content to the nation's stock of information, whether it be scientific data, community histories or creative content.

  One of the our action plans is to implement a National Content Strategy by 2007 so that New Zealanders can gain better access to the ¡°treasure chest" of New Zealand¡¯s information. For example, there are national heritage collections, government information, databases of publicly funded scientific and technical information that kiwis should be able to access, from work, home or the classroom.

  Forum participants have provided important feedback on the draft Digital Strategy.

  Some have suggested the addition of a fourth C "continuity" to the existing three of content/capacity and connection.

  Whether or not this is already implicit in the content stream is a moot point, but the goal of ensuring continuity within the National Content Strategy is, I think, fully accepted.

  An independent funding body set up along the lines of NZ On Air to fund digitisation initiatives has also been suggested. Budget processes currently underway prevent me from commenting other than to say the proposal has been noted.

  I acknowledge the Forum's support of this initiative. The Forum's membership has the potential to make a significant contribution this programme, particularly as it relates to the development of a collaborative infrastructure to facilitate resource discovery, access, and preservation; and to identify priorities for content creation.

  The Forum's achievements to date demonstrate that the members are able to collaborate effectively towards a common purpose of developing, delivering, and preserving digital resources that reflect the cultural heritage of Aotearoa New Zealand.

  Conclusion

  I am delighted to be here to open the National Digital Forum. Our shared goal is no less than to forge and protect our national identify and taonga in cyberspace the way we are doing in other realms.

  The challenges for all of us here in moving forward with New Zealand content are outweighed only by the potential rewards. For my part I will be pushing with my colleagues the importance of realising the goals of our digital strategy. For many of you the challenge will be putting in place at grass roots level some of the actions outlined in the strategy and continuing to contribute to our on-line heritage. I wish you the best of luck and hope the 2004 forum is a great success.