This submission was made on behalf of the NZICT Group Members (“NZICT”), and input from its Communities of Interest, notably the NZ Health IT Cluster, and other stakeholders including the University of Auckland Computer Science Department, Square Kilometre Array Research & Development Consortium, and the Square Kilometre Array Industry Consortium.

Areas of alignment:

• The principles outlined by the NZ RS&T paper include: multidisciplinary approach to reduce waste, focus on training and skills base including a national internship programme, balance of supporting discovery through to exploitation. Each of these principles is recognized as either specific strategic themes or underlying assumptions behind NZICT Innovation sub-committee’s strategy (see the attached presentation document).
• Investment Structure, High Tech industries are the second biggest area of focus. The NZICT Innovation sub-committee believes that High Tech (ICT) in particular represents one of the biggest opportunities for NZ productivity growth.
• Investment Structure, principles listed include, co-funded with users, strategic long term, and commercialisation support. Each of these areas was mentioned as critical by the NZICT Innovation sub-committee.

Areas for Improvement:

• Potential platforms for investing are listed. Innovation in ICT (and the use of ICT) is not one of these. The NZICT Innovation sub-committee believe that Innovative ICT is/should be a key enabler of productivity growth and innovation in other sectors. We propose adding an investment platform supporting research into how ICT could better enable productivity in the other sectors mentioned in conjunction with the Government’s investment in ultra-fast broadband. This ICT-broadband platform could sit across all of the other ones mentioned.

Submission Date: 17 November 2009

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