Dunne to attend D5 conference in Estonia

Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne will represent New Zealand at the meeting of the D5 Digital Leaders’ Summit in Tallinn, Estonia 18-20 November 2015.

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 second meeting of this group following the inaugural summit held in London in December last year.

“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”, says Mr Dunne.

According to the United Nations E-Government Survey released in July 2014, New Zealand already shows ‘an exemplary commitment to the provision of transactional services’ and is ranked ninth in the world, up significantly from just two years ago. New Zealand is especially well regarded for the work we have done on cloud computing and the use of the creative commons licence for open data.

“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.

“One such demonstration in the New Zealand context is that Internal Affairs have renewed nearly 500,000 adult passports online since the November 2012 launch of the service. Next year that number will grow even faster when first time adult passport applicants using a RealMe verified identity and child renewals can apply online.

“The government’s Better Public Services strategy is about achieving similar types of results across all levels of government engagement with its citizens. The establishment of the D5 provides an ongoing opportunity for like-minded countries to share experiences and learn from each other. It has already proved to be an extremely valuable forum”, Mr Dunne said.

While en route to the summit Mr Dunne will visit London for meetings with the National Archives, United Kingdom, and the British Library The focus of these discussions will be around archival conservation and in particular, the  preservation of heritage documents and the collaborative model developed by the British Library with other national collecting institutions to maximise access and responsiveness to users of their services.

In addition, in his capacity as Associate Minister of Health, he will have discussions with the National Institute for Health Care and Excellence (NICE) around access to medicines in the context of New Zealand’s national medicines strategy, Medicines New Zealand. He will also visit London Ambulance for discussions on their collaborative approach with other emergency response organisations in the greater London area.