Dunne to attend inaugural D5 conference and We Protect Summit in London

Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne will represent New Zealand at the inaugural meeting of the D5 Digital Leaders’ Summit in London 9-10 December 2014.

The D5 is a grouping of five nations– United Kingdom, New Zealand, 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 next week will be the first time the five nations have met together.

“New Zealand is well placed to play 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 on-line 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 300,000 passports on-line. That percentage of on-line renewals is rising steadily.

“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 opportunity for like-minded countries to share experiences and learn from each other. It promises to become an extremely valuable forum”, Mr Dunne said.

While in London Mr Dunne will also represent New Zealand at the We Protect Summit convened by British Prime Minister, David Cameron and attended by over 40 countries from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America.

The aim of the summit is to commit to global action in tackling online child sexual exploitation (CSE) through identifying and protecting victims, removing child abuse material from the internet, and strengthening co-operation between law enforcement agencies across the world to track down perpetrators.

“The scourge of child sexual exploitation has intensified in recent years through the advent of the internet. New Zealand, in partnership with Australia, is recognised as a key regional partner in supporting and helping our Pacific and South East Asian neighbours build operational capacity to effectively deal with online CSE.

“It is anticipated a Statement of Action will be agreed by delegates and reflect the aims of the summit to which New Zealand would be a signatory”, Mr Dunne said.