Labour’s Communications and IT policy, announced today (and available here), will invest in local people, business and intellectual capital to drive our economy forward.
Kiwi kids are growing up in a digital world. They need the skills and career pathways available to enable them to excel in this increasingly important arena.
Labour will ensure all Kiwi families can access the internet and high speed broadband no matter what their background.
Some of our greatest innovations can come out of the most deprived areas. Labour will encourage community participation in IT by among other things increasing funding to Computer Clubhouses and Computers in Homes by $2.7 million.
Labour has the commitment and the plans to establish New Zealand as a digital nation. This means making sure New Zealand develops a comprehensive digital infrastructure and ensuring that no-one misses out, so that all of our potential whizz kids of the future can flourish.
Labour has some grave concerns about Government’s urban and rural broadband scheme, and with the amendments to the Telecommunications Act passed in 2011.
National’s broadband network must not be a tool to entrench the divide between the haves and the have nots. Labour will conduct an independent review of the ultrafast broadband rollout, including a full assessment of the true costs of the scheme.
While we commit to working within Crown Fibre Holdings’ current investment limit of $1.35bn for ultrafast broadband, we will allow and encourage the UFB to be extended to other areas of New Zealand.
Labour’s ICT policy also sets out an ambitious forward thinking strategy to draw together the policy and regulatory environments for ICT, telecommunications, broadcasting and the internet realm Labour’s ICT policy is a converged policy with broadcasting. The broadcasting component will be announced separately in the coming weeks.
Many other countries including the United Kingdom, Malaysia, the EU, the UK, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, South Africa have already taken this approach. Australia and Canada are moving in that direction. As the technologies converge a number of issues arise around the networks that will be needed to carry both content produced inside New Zealand and which comes from outside the country.
Each action Labour proposes is underpinned by the recognition that a growing economy is dependent on building local skills. Labour will:
- Address the current skills shortage in the ICT sector and wider community by promoting digital careers, matching tertiary courses to IT industry needs and attracting more skilled ICT practitioners to New Zealand
- Lift the number of IT Industry interns from 200 to 1000 nationwide.
- Establish a Ministry of Communications and IT, based in the Ministry of Economic Development, to bring together all policy involving broadcasting, communications and information technology issues.
- Establish an independent network regulator to investigate the impact of monopolies in both the telecommunications and broadcasting marketplaces.
- Appoint a Chief Technical Advisor, responsible for producing technology roadmaps for New Zealand
- Review the functions of the Broadcasting Standards Authority, the Press Council and the Advertising Standards Authority.
- Investigate a whole of government approach to open source software.
- Introduce a government ‘App store’ to provide a short circuit for fledgling NZ software developers to get to market.
- Set an aspirational target of 2/3 of government agencies using some form of open source software for a reasonable proportion of their software needs by 2015.
- Encourage greater diversity in IT suppliers in the public sector
- Establish a ‘Centre of Excellence’ for open source software development.
- Improve New Zealand’s Cyber Security Strategy.
- Establish a Computer Emergency Response Team for New Zealand.
Labour’s ICT policy also contains the details of Labour’s policy on copyright, which will remove the clause for internet account suspension for infringing file sharing as a remedy the District Court can impose; and commits to conduct a full review of the Copyright Act, with the aim of introducing a new Copyright Bill within 18 months that updates and extends the framework for digital copyright in New Zealand.
It’s a policy with a lot in it. I hope you’ll read it.
Pleased to see you’ve acknowledged the problems faced by schools who already have UFB – they can’t afford to use it because of data costs. In my skim through the policy I didn’t note any reference to keeping home data costs manageable. May have missed this, of course, however there is little point working to ensure most/all NZ families have UFB at home if they can’t afford to it either.
Must grate that this policy was released by Whaleoil yesterday!!! You probably need a policy on increasing Labours Cyber Security Policy!
This is why I am voting for Labour on 26 November. Bravo.
Good to see an willingness to adopt open source software, I believe Brazil’s experience with it has been a positive one. But bear in mind that it is not without cost – those maintaining the systems will need to be fully trained and there will be costs in staff training. It may be that on balance a bid from a proprietary vendor may be more cost effective over the long term.
Already read this on WhaleOil. Not that any policy Labour releases will make any difference if the All Blacks lift the cup on Sunday.
Outstanding policy Clare, especially the focus on skills development and internships.
It’s fairly clear to many in the IT sector that skills development is the key factor in technology-driven economic growth. it’s great to see a good depth of understanding of the issues facing the ICT sector, and the opportunities tech-driven economic development can bring to New Zealand.
Well done.
Paul Matthews
NZCS Chief Executive
Well done Claire – ICT/Science and innovation have been largely ignored by National, who seem content to nibble around the edges, shuffing deck chairs and taking credit for much of the work already done by Labour… I would however reccomend one thing, adopt a more integrated focus on ICT and education, ICT savvy should start at primary school level…..
Clare –
Some great stuff here. I’m hoping you can answer a few questions/comments though.
Lift the number of IT Industry interns from 200 to 1000 nationwide.
Is this expected to be managed between tertiary providors and the sectors or is governent involvment anticipated?
Establish an independent network regulator to investigate the impact of monopolies in both the telecommunications and broadcasting marketplaces.
This already exists for Telecommunications under the auspices of MED / ComCom / IOG.
Is the expectation here to merge these functions and extend to broadcasting?
Appoint a Chief Technical Advisor, responsible for producing technology roadmaps for New Zealand
Not sure what this means givent that this tends to be driven by the private sector. Are you suggesting someone comparative to the Office of the Chief Science Advisor?
Introduce a government ‘App store’ to provide a short circuit for fledgling NZ software developers to get to market.
Who is the market for this ‘store’? State agencies?
Set an aspirational target of 2/3 of government agencies using some form of open source software for a reasonable proportion of their software needs by 2015.
‘Aspiration’ and ‘reasonable proportion’ are a bit wishy-washy. Surely hard targets can be set around Enterprise / desktop apps.
Encourage greater diversity in IT suppliers in the public sector.
Why? It’s already pretty diverse and there is esssentially an open tender policy. Also, this might be diametrically opposed to the open source policy given that most suppliers are wedded to particular vendors.
Establish a Computer Emergency Response Team for New Zealand.
For what purpose?
And just think, if the 4th Labour government hadn’t sold off and deregulated Telecom it would already have been done and telecommunications in NZ would be a lot cheaper than they are. That ~$20b in profits that’s been taken out of our economy since 1990 could have done a hell of a lot.
For what purpose? Telecommunications infrastructure is a Natural Monopoly and trying to get competition in it just boosts the costs. Even broadcast is (although less so) as you need to put a tall tower in the best location to get Line of Sight.
Good idea. Supporting a “free-market” contraindicates using closed proprietary standards (ie, anything from MS).
Not good enough. Actually require them to do so unless they can prove that what they require doesn’t exist in the OpenSource community (You’d be amazed at what’s available for free (although I’d suggest that, as a government, making a donation) with any Linux distribution from basic office software to dedicated CAD and modelling, databases and servers and complex financial tools).
PS. BTW, why do you always release policy in horrible PDF format? Haven’t you heard of the more easily read e-books yet (specifically, e-pub)?
Move to open source? Upskill the economy? Remove internet suspension clause?
WONDERFUL!
Computer Emergency Response Team? National Cybersecurity?
Sounds like a disastrous tool waiting for government/monopoly abuse.
SCARY.
Hopefully reading the pdf will explain how those other two things will increase our prosperity, rights and freedom. They sound damaging and it looks like they’re hidden under hollow open source promises. Good one.
Oh Clare, what a disappointment. For a policy that has been so long in the making it contains nothing that is inspirational or aspirational. So much comes under the ‘gonna’ category or has been previously advocated by other groups.
The convergence bits are simply stating the obvious and apart from appointing a CTO, all you are going to discuss and investigate.
Faster broadband everywhere is going to happen whether you legislate for it or not in the areas where a business case can be made. But what will Labour do for the rest of the country? I am not sure how you can ‘sort out the mess’ and at the same time commit to completing the UFB rollout. When it comes to the ‘next steps’ I think that Mr Joyce screwed out a good financial deal so how you will be able to advance timings and extend coverage within the existing budget will be a wonder to behold. Under the radio spectrum heading, Labour has missed a huge opportunity to be inspirational – all you are going to do is discuss how the proceeds from the spectrum auctions will be spent? Blinkered thinking!
The 700MHz band offers a great opportunity to bring almost ultra fast broadband to rural areas and so reduce the serious digital divide that will now grow ever wider. But you did not even make the connection!
The policy document shows a lack of understanding about the digital divide. It is not about the affordability of broadband services. It is about equal opportunity of access to the internet and in particular, it is about the availability of broadband in rural areas. Again, in this area Labour has avoided doing something positive about the economic hegemony that will maintain the status quo and so ensure the expansion of the rural/urban digital divide.
That the Copyright Act will be reviewed is good but again the hegemony of the status quo is so strong and entrenched that nothing will actually change.
Patent Law, open software and cyber security are all important and relevant to a digital economy, but they will not convince a nation that Labour has any sound ideas on the digital future that we will all have to contend with.
“And just think, if the 4th Labour government hadn’t sold off and deregulated Telecom”
You liked waiting months and months for a terrible phone owned by a poorly run state service? Are you that cheap or is your benefit cheque just not cutting the mustard?
“Labour will also investigate the viability of a small copyright levy on Internet access” (pg 11)
So Labour will introduce a new internet tax?
“Establish a Computer Emergency Response Team for New Zealand.”
What is wrong with AusCert? Whenever I go to their conference there are plenty of Kiwi attendees. It isn’t as if this sort of function needs geographical proximity and the bigger AusCert customer base means that they’re well funded.
Want to know what the access time for ADSL in rural NZ is? 6+ months. So the privatisation doesn’t seem to have improved anything there (actually, it’s made it worse).
Wasn’t poorly run either. Maybe not the best but it wasn’t poorly run.
$272m profit 1985
$300m profit 1987
$310m profit 1988
It went up from there. The difference is that in the 1980s the full profit was fed back into the network putting in things like digital exchanges and fibre optic cables. After 1990 ~15% was fed back into network and the rest was siphoned into the pockets of the few with quite a lot going overseas. Now, we’ve not only lost that ~$20b but we’re also having to pay several billion (Labour started the corporate welfare to get our network up to speed in the early 2000s with Project Probe IIRC) more through our taxes to get the fast network we would’ve got 5 to 10 years ago if we hadn’t deregulated and sold Telecom.
I can assure you, all that privatisation has done is cost us more and prevented us from having the capable network that we would have had.
An internet tax? No thanks.
I hear that when you’re trying to make things easier for less-wealthy people to access, you want to direct the flow of funds away from the top of the pyramid and stop enabling the oligarchs etc
You know, instead of doing the exact opposite and saying “lol internets for everyone
ps ignore that we’re taxing you to pay off the racketeers”
There are some good points in there, but I can’t fathom how you might have thought a levy on internet access would be a good idea???
Alienate everyone with an internet connection so you can fund a handful of content creators – great idea!
“Labour will also investigate the viability of a small copyright levy on Internet access, which would develop the digital platform for accessing Kiwi content mentioned above. Funds raised could go to content creators through an arms length collecting and distribution arrangement.”
This sounds like an utterly terrible idea, not to mention unnecessary. Maybe you could explain why you think it is necessary to tax the internet?
The policy describes the taxed money as being used to develop a “digital platform for accessing Kiwi content”. Is that digital platform the “vibrant, creative market for digital productions where consumers can easily find and buy the material they want”? That sounds like an e-commerce marketplace, except the content is paid for out of the internet tax whether or not internet users want to access and use any of the content. I’m not quite sure why the government needs to be involved in something like that.
But perhaps I’ve got it all wrong. Can you enlighten me?
Still looking to the failed policies of the 4th Labour government I see.
In other words what you should be doing is having a single government owned network which the ISPs can compete over. This would save the costs of having duplicate competing networks while still having the quasi-competition that brings no benefits for added costs that you seem to think is important.
Why are we adding costs by duplicating departments? Of course it can be done in one agency – it’s the same job. Get them to discuss what needs to happen with MED and other departments of course but you don’t need two independent agencies to oversee the roll out of the network.
FIFY
~$20b is a lot to lose but we lost it just with the sale of Telecom. Just think of what our network would be capable of if that money had been re-invested in the network (as was Telecom’s modus operandi before being sold) rather than going to profits. It is, actually, the best proof available that profit is a dead weight loss and yet you (Labour) want to encourage more of it.
So, about $4m to get them all a computer. Pocket change. This government just wasted more than that on new BMWs.
@Draco. Please explain which entity it is that you claim had profits of $272m, $300m and $310m. My understanding is that NZ post had a monopoly on telecommunications in NZ until 1988, and Telecom was only formed on 1 April 1987 (therefore the only figure you have quoted that may have been Telecom’s is the YE1988, $310m).
Have a look at this:
http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/MultipageDocumentPage____4847.aspx
And it also gives a few of the benefits of the privatisation of Telecom, which you may want to digest. I don’t think its particularly sensible of you to be giving assurances either, since they don’t appear to be based on anything other than your view of the world.
@ Draco
A point to note re LFCs – they are not really competing networks. Each LFC operates in a separate geographic area under the auspices of UFB
If another player feels that they can compete within that LFC area by bringing services to market faster or cheaper, there is no specific barrier to entry.
However, as the price of Layer 1 / 2 supply (dark fibre / bitstream over fibre) and equivalence of access will be regulated to the RSPs, there will be little incentive to compete in the access market (though there is likely to be in the wholesale data market where it might be economic to undercut the regulated price).
Hi John, it seems to me there is more than one digital divide. I’d say there are at least 3: location based, socio-economic, and age based. Traditionally, however, the term has primarily been used to refer to the socio-economic divide, so I’m not sure we can really ping Labour too much on that one, given they do address the rural:urban divide, however (un)satisfactorily, elsewhere in the policy.
I see you’re an entrepreneur in the rural wireless area – what would you have liked to see in Labour’s policy?
Apart from, er, have I got this right, allocating 700mhz, the spectrum we need to support every tourist’s 4G smartphone, and of course to allow us to buy such phones ourselves, entirely to fixed rural broadband providers? I presume I’m misunderstanding your intent there, but on the face of it that sounds like a non-starter….
What do you like more about the ICT policies advanced by other parties? I was a bit shocked by the lack of detail offered by every other party apart from Labour on this issue last I looked into it, so I’m curious as to what you mean by “sound policy” in this context.
Post Office C&M branch. The branch that became Telecom. And yes, before you ask the question, the bookkeeping was separate. The Post branch was running at a loss, so was banking but C&M was running a profit.
Name one.
Put it this way. Telecom started putting in digital exchanges and upgrading the network in the 1980s using the income generated from renting out phone lines. They used no government funding. This process was expected to have been finished around 1996 (actual finish was, IIRC, 1999). If Telecom had continued such policies of using the full profit for network upgrades then the upgrades we’re presently paying out of taxes for would have been done already and would have been paid for through normal income (phone rent) (we were actually putting in fibre to the node in the late 1980s BTW – the privatised Telecom was removing that in the early 2000s).
Instead Telecom got sold and only 15% went to maintenance and upgrades instead of the full profit resulting in us having to pay out several more billions of taxpayer money to get the what should have already been done out of what we’ve already paid.
The only one that might apply would be the re-organisation and that could have been done without selling it off.
How else do you supply infrastructure? And it was market driven to a degree – urban and suburban areas were getting upgraded faster than rural.
So why are we even bothering with them? It’s just more expense through commercial agreements and bureaucracy (which really is my major complaint).
@Draco. Thanks for that Draco. Can you direct me to a link re the finanicals you have quoted? Id appreciate having a look. On the benenfits, read the MED link I posted earlier.
@ Draco
So why are we even bothering with them? It’s just more expense through commercial agreements and bureaucracy (which really is my major complaint).
A very good point. It’s entirely political.
1. There was no way the electorate would stomach Chorus (misperceived by the public as the same beast as Telecom Retail) being given UFB in totality because the meme is “Telecom = bad”.
2. Politicians of all stripes have spend so many years publicly kicking Telecom that they would lose face by awarding the entirety of UFB+RBI contracts (in spite of it being an entirely different entity under the conditions of the UFB deal as per point 1) even though there would have been significant efficiencies and economies of scale in doing so.
Replying to Seth,
Yes the digital divide can be categorized in to a number of areas and you mention 3 of them. The digital divide can be simplified to: those that have computers and internet access, versus those that do not. The factors that result in the have-nots (socio-economic, geographic, age) is where remedial efforts need to be concentrated. The factor of greatest economic impact is geographic (urban/rural) and whilst it is true that the Labour policy mentions this, a mention is all it gets. Affordability of computers and internet access is certainly an issue and is the only factor that Labour offers specific solutions to – those solutions (CIH, Computer Club) are already in place and I believe, reasonably well funded.
As to specific Labour party policies, I would have liked to see some principals established. For example, that access to high speed broadband is a right (Labour alludes to this in section 4 where they affirm the right to impart and receive information and opinion (that) ‘necessarily includes the ability to access the Internet…’). Another principle would be that the cost of broadband access is the same regardless of location (this is what the TSO achieved with telephone services).
In particular, I would like to see Labour differentiate itself on the basis of providing for communities to help themselves rather than waiting for the corporates to do it for them (as per National’s hegemony). Rather than allocating $1.8Bn to Chorus and others, a fund contestable by communities to provide their own infrastructure would help build resilient communities rather than dependent ones.
The 700MHz band. Yes, absolutely this should be allocated for fixed rural broadband applications. That band is not needed to er, ‘support every tourist’s 4G smart phone…’. At this moment, there is sufficient unused spectrum available to do that. And with new wireless technologies like full duplex on a single frequency (this will double our spectrum available for mobile broadband) and ‘twisted wireless’ (projected to increase the bandwidth available from existing spectrum 100x), it is not necessary to tie 3% of our spectrum up in 20 year contracts to monopolistic mobile companies. The economic benefit from using that spectrum in fixed rural broadband services has not been quantified, whilst the economic benefit from using it for mobile broadband is predicated solely on cost savings to the mobile operators.
So you have not misunderstood my intentions on this. But you are right that it will likely be a non-starter. Not because it is a bad idea, but only because too many, Labour included, are blinkered by a wireless paradigm centred on the mobile operators wants.
So Clare, do you want to have your cake and eat it at the same time?
From last night’s Net11 event, you are reported that ‘Curran retorted that a “study” hardly represents a commitment’. Which is quite right, yet your own ICT policy is full of studies and talkies!
Great thread. Have really enjoyed the questions, answers, suggestions and comments. Learnt a bit along the way too. It;s great to get to this kind of nitty gritty of a policy (for and agin with no name calling). Am looking forward to Clare’s answers. When national releases some, where can I go to see the same scrutiny?
Also from the Net11 event, as the Twitter correspondent who suggested use of the 700 MHz spectrum freed by the switchoff of analogue TV to improve rural access, I think Mr Joyce has entirely missed the point!
This was that the 700MHz spectrum be dedicated to fixed rural broadband use.
As a part of the RBI agreement, mobile operators have undertaken to provide fourth-generation mobile access under the RBI. Unless they have been guaranteed some of the 700MHz spectrum to fulfill that undertaking, then they must have planned on using other spectrum to meet that commitment.
Therefore, either they do not need the 700MHz band or they already have a right to it.