Kiwiblog

An interesting article on the NZ Computer Society website on what we need to do to increase our innovation potential.

The summary:

1. Finish fixing ICT education in schools
2. Government needs to understand the potential of technology
3. Significantly increase the number of R&D Internships available
4. Excite kids (and their parents!) about IT as a career
5. Activate student communities to drive a change in culture
6. Support and change the mindset of our entrepreneurs
7. Act professionally
8. Internationally align ICT degrees and link them closer to industry
9. Help grow professionals through mentoring and development
10. Get Ultra-fast Broadband in place

Sounds a pretty good list to me.

There’s been an interesting court case as to what constitutes a charity. Paul Matthews of the NZ Computer Society blogs:

As many of you will know we’ve been embroiled in a debate with the Charities Commission over the last year or so as to the educational nature of our activities. Earlier this week the High Court released their ruling, dismissing our appeal.

Without going into huge detail, in short we are of the view that we exist for the advancement of education, in various forms and in various contexts. When you break our activiites and purposes down we think it’s very hard to draw any other conclusion.

After all, in its purest form professionalism is simply education and the application of that (ie. experience) plus ethics.

If we exist for the advancement of education then by definition we are “charitable”. In practice this means two things. People can donate to our programmes (such as KiwiSkills, a programme focused on increasing the country’s digital literacy levels), and we don’t pay income tax on activities (although we still pay GST, PAYE, FBT, ACC etc).

So what did the High Court decide?

The Charities Commission granted us charitable status when we first applied. They reviewed our application in detail then agreed with us that we clearly existed for the advancement of education.

Some time after this decision the Commission began re-looking at charities they thought were in “grey areas” with a view to establishing precedents and after their investigation they concluded that we weren’t charitable after all. While we see our purpose as advancing education and our mandate wider than just our membership, they disagreed.

We appealed this decision to the High Court, and had our day in court. I must say, regardless of outcome our lawyers represented our position well and we got our day in court.

The High Court ruled on the appeal earlier this week, refusing to overturn the Commission’s decision.

What are the implications of this?

We’re still looking at this in detail, however the interpretation appears to suggest that if the result of having particular knowledge or skills imparted is that professionals or “the industry and profession” become more educated or skilled, this is not regarded as Educational under the Charities Act.

One of the primary reasons we appealed the Charities Commission ruling is because we were deeply, deeply concerned about this precedent, which is likely to have a significant impact on other education-focused organisations.

So NZCS conclude:

Frankly, we think this definition is daft and a law change is most likely necessary to clarify this. While we’re most likely not going to appeal the decision, we will be writing to the Minister responsible for this area expressing our very serious concerns.

Another organisation caught up in being deemed non-charitable is the National Council of Women. That one is less controversial as they are fairly overtly political – they submit on almost every single bill that goes through Parliament.

Hard to blog Nat, as one gets so caught up just listening to him.

He just called IT industry a sausage fest – as only 10% to 30% are women. Much laughter.

Says no point going down path of blame for this. Says gender is just the tip of the iceberg. And it is a huge opportunity.

Talks about Myer-Briggs tests as a form of astrology

Say ICT industry all belongs to one of their segments (missed which one).

Says the things which drive away women, also drive away shitloads of men. We need more people fullstop.

He said too often programmers (not all) are arseholes, as we like Darwinian competition. Newbies given too many stick for mistakes.

NZCS Chief Executive Paul Matthews (Chair), Web guru Nat Torkington, CPIT Head of School Alison Young, TUANZ CEO Ernie Newman and Orcon Founder Seeby Woodhouse

What does the future look like:

Seeby: points out innovation is not just computers – many farmers are innovative and have never used a computer. Has been on three year restraint of trade sabattical from ICT industry so has given him lots of time to think. There are soft and hard trends. A soft trend is a share market going up three days in a row, But no guarantee will go up four days in a row. An ageing population is a hard trend, so Orion likely to do well as they specialize in healthcare technology.

Also things happen in cycles, so can do well if you understand the cycle.

To quote George W Bush we vastly mis-underestimated Moore’s Law, which is computing power and storage doubles every 18 months. Believes we are at the start of the stick on a hockey stick. Going from 1 MB to 2 MB not big but going from 250 GB to 500 GB is significant – means can store your entire photo collection etc.

Thinks cellphones will become instant translation devices, will allow travel anywhere.

Nat: Talking open source and the web. Encyclopedia Brittancia was an icon on authority and respect. Not to say Wikipedia is, but certainly EB no longer is.

Also says services over mobile are the most exciting things for improving people’s lives.

Ernie: Talking on telco. Copper, mobile and fibre. Copper competition is about as good as it gets – have the standard regulatory environment. Telecommunications is so much an eoconmy of scale that natural end point is a monopoly if you have no regulation.

Mobile was two duopolists. Very geographically separated market. 2 degrees has shaken this up, and all three networks now using same technology. Things good so long as termination rates come down and 2 degrees stay in the market.

Fibre: Say aim should be to 100% of NZ, not 80%.

Attacking BusinessNZ saying they have always argued against the interest of the majority of their members, and have opposed every move the Commerce Commission has made to have more competition.

Missed Alison’s contribution as I was handing out demerits in General Debate.

Seeby talking about my favourite topic – GPS location services on mobiles. Gave example of if at a sports game in a stadium, you can zoom in and see which aisle and row each of your friends are in, so can easily meet up etc.

Craig Nevill-Manning is a Kiwi, but also Director of Engineering for Google in New York.

Talking about what Google did to help with aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. They used their mapping tools to identify areas most affected etc. Also they set up a person finder service where people could register people they were looking for, or for people to say they were ok. Had 50,000 entries on it. Needed a lot of translation though.

Quoted Larry Wall who said the three virtues that programmers have are laziness, impatience and hubris

Craig said the laziness and impatience is good as it means you get things done on time, and don’t try and empire build. And the hubris is the fact you’re willing to let people see what you have created, and are confident it will work.

He’s having problem getting a website in Chrome. A wit yelled out “Try Safari”

He’s now writing some code  live from the stage. Some in the audience are yelling out suggestions as he fixes bugs. In the end he runs out of time, so we don’t get to see a mash-up for Google Maps to show where boat ramps are.

Just showed off an image recognition service – you hold it up to the webcam, and Google recognises it and searches for info on it. Cool.

Sam Morgan introduced as the person most NZers think of, when they think innovation.

Sam talking about how he had an early Internet – posting floppy disks to friends. Discovered you could wash postmarks off stamps and re-use them!

Then he continued with his criminal exploits, of splicing into his neighbour’s phone lines to dial all over the world – stopped when they got the phone bill. Also a way you could get free calls through 018.

Sam had so many youthful criminal exploits, he could be a law and order spokesman for ACT

Then talked about Trade Me. Importance of making it a fun place to work. Focused on the trust model – how that was crucial to strangers selling and buying to and from each other.

Also spoke on how speed is crucial to usability.

Sam is now on board of Fairfax Media – said he has gone from spending 10 years trying to kill newspapers to now trying to work out how they survive in the digital world.

Now talking about Pacific Fibre. Said idea came over a breakfast with David Cunliffe when he and Rod were saying that fibre to the home will just move the bottleneck to the overseas links, and Cunliffe challenged them to do something about it themselves – so they did!

They want a world with no data caps (yay!). Showed a nice graphic of how video has grown from 1% to over 50% of international bandwidth. You Tube alone is responsible for 10% of global traffic!

Showed off a video cam you can place over your ear, and you can talk and show your caller what you are seeing. This will all be part of what drives future bandwidth.

I’m in Rotorua for the NZ Computer Society 50th anniversary conference.

Steven Joyce spoke on how Governments are not good at innovation – tried that in an experiment known as the Soviet Union. Said innovation happens in all the companies and firms that are represented at this conference, and the Government’ job is to try and facilitate a supportive environment.

He said that copper has done better than anyone expected, but fibre is the future. The current investment in copper is about catching up with the rest of the world, while the planned investment in fibre is designed to give NZ a competitive advantage – an advantage that the NZ Institute says could be worth over $2b a year in extra GDP.

While most focus is on the $1.5b urban fibre project, Joyce said he considers the rural broadband situation is more urgent as around half our rural citizens still can only get dial-up. I thought this was ironic as the speed at the conference hotel had slowed down to dial-up also!

I missed most of Paul Matthews response, as both the wireless and mobile Internet connections were frozen so had to reboot my laptop.

Conference Chair Liz Eastwood is doing a show and tell of technology from the past – the slide show projectors we used to use to show off our holidays, and the telex machines etc etc. You do forget how much the world has changed!

This week I’ll be attending and live-blogging from NZCS’s 50^th Anniversary Conference in Rotorua. The conference is intended to be a celebration of 50 years of ICT across the sector, not just of NZCS. I find it amazing NZCS is 50 years old – one tends to think of the computer age being the dawn of the PC in the early 1980s, but of course they were around a couple of decades before that – just a lot bigger!

I must say, it’s hard to think of a better line-up of speakers. As well as high profile people like Sam Morgan, Ian Taylor and Rod Drury, there’s also a huge range of experts covering pretty much every area of computing and IT plus a BarCamp on Saturday.

The focus of the conference is on Innovation. From their website:

We as individuals, as organisations and as a country must take action, harness our creative energy and ‘no limits’ spirit to propel New Zealand forward as a leader in the digital economy, and dramatically improve our productivity. Kiwi ingenuity is needed today more than ever.

And we must celebrate what the last 50 years have brought up, and learn from them whilst looking forward to  the future.

I’m led to believe there are still some tickets left if you get in quick. Should be an excellent event, and hope to see a lot of people I know there.

The NZ Computer Society is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and has a great line-up of speakers at their conference in Rotorua from Thu 16 to Saturday 18 September.

There are two days of the main conference, and then on the Saturday a BarCamp unconference.

Speakers in the main conference include:

• Craig Nevill-Manning, Engineering Director, Google
• Greg Lane, National Director, Canadian Council of IT Professionals
• Sam Morgan, Founder, Trade Me
• Nat Torkington, open source and data guru
• Ian Taylor, Founder, Innovation Research Ltd
• Rod Drury, Founder, Xero
• Sam Knowles, Founding CEO, Kiwibank
• Ian McCrae, Founder, Orion Health

Hope to see a few people I know there.

They’re all Kiwis incidentially

NZ Computer Society CEO Paul Matthews blogs on the parties’ ICT policies. A summary:

• ACT: No policy except reference to ICT debate Rodnet took part in
• Greens: policy indicates that the Greens understand well that leverage of ICT is essential to business and community growth, which is excellent. All in all, a well thought out policy that clearly articulates their position.
• Labour: We couldn’t find an ICT or Communications policy on the Labour Party website either. This is doubly disappointing, as we know they have done some great things in this area and have some good plans, however the purpose of this exercise was to judge the easy availability and quality of the policy on their websites.
• National: the availability and detail of National policies in this area was refreshingly good. National’s Schools Policy (released yesterday) is the only policy that makes it clear that the teaching of ICT is as important as the teaching with ICT, with National pledging to ensure the creation of Computing (and Business) Achievement Standards. We thoroughly congratulate National on this (and put out a press release yesterday doing just that). This shouldn’t be underestimated – it’s absolutely essential we address this very serious issue.
• NZ First: The only mention of ICT in NZ First’s Education Policy is “provide all primary and secondary educational institutions, particularly those in rural areas, with up-to-date communications technology”. Whilst this in itself is good, it’s unfortunate there wasn’t a little more information on exactly what is meant by this.
• Progressives: The Progressives, like most others, don’t have a dedicated general ICT policy, however do have a well articulated (albeit brief on detail) Broadband policy
• United Future: Unfortunately United Future don’t mention ICT (either infrastructure or education) in their education policies, although it may be possible to infer it from some of the points they do make around sufficiency of standards in NCEA. United Future do have a Communications policy (available here) which, whilst short, does discuss some facts and figures, which is good.

A useful roundup of the parties.

Six major ICT groups have put out a statement slamming the new copyright law as deeply flawed and unworkable. The six groups are:

1. InternetNZ
2. Telecommunications Carriers Forum
3. TUANZ
4. Internet Service Providers Association of New Zealand
5. NZ Computer Society
6. Women in Technology

There has never previously been an issue that those groups have joined forces on.

This law was passed last year. I think every party but the Greens voted for it, and it is just a shambles. Even worse the clause that is causing many of the problems was deleted by the Select Committee (I was one of those who sucessfully lobbied for it to be removed) and it was put back in by the Government (but voted for by most parties) at the last minute during the Committee of the House stage.

It is s92A causing the nightmares. It states:

An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.

Now what the hell does that mean? Some in the IP industry are saying it means that an ISP must permanently terminate a user from the Internet upon receipt of three complaints alleging copyright infringement.

Note just alleged infringements. Not that you must terminate someone only after they have been found guilty in court.

You could do a parody of an advertisement, and argue that this qualifies as fair use (as permitted under law). If the advertiser disagrees and complains you are on the way to being kicked off the Internet.

Upload to You Tube a video of yourself with the radio on in the background, and you may have infringed copyright of the song on radio, and bang there goes your Internet access.

Don’t believe me. Here’s the NZ Computer Society Chief Executive:

NZCS generally steers clear of criticising laws, however in the case of Section 92a of the new Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill we, like most others in the sector, have to make an exception.

In fact the problem is so large the entire ICT and Telecomms sector is now up in arms about it.

Now let’s get one thing clear. Copyright owners absolutely have the right to protect their intellectual property, and NZCS and others are not for one second saying otherwise. To state it clearly: Copyright violation is a major problem, and we support moves to reduce it.

However to trample all over the rights of computer and internet users, and to place ISPs in the position of potentially having to be the policeman, judge, jury and executioner in what are often vague and unclear situations is completely unreasonable.

This is actually eerily similar to a situation where a power company would be forced to have a policy stating that they must cut the power off to a house, business, school or library (yes, they’re included) if someone on the property used that electricity to do something illegal. I can’t imagine that situation receiving a good reception, so why is this any different?

And here is Ernie Newman from TUANZ:

Few people would disagree that the musicians and others who own copyright to digital content are entitled to have their legitimate interests protected. But a workable balance has to be found between the interests of copyright owners, and those of legitimate Internet users and Internet Service Providers.

Yet for that kind of balance, this Act scores zero out of ten on the NCEA scale. …

I’m struggling to remember a more imprecise piece of legislation. This is just abrogation of parliament’s responsibility.

So what can be done?

Well the good news is the law has not yet come into force. The Government can bring it into force by an Order in Council. I understand they are planning to do this in October.

Lobby Ministers and MPs to have Cabinet delay that section. They can trigger the rest of the new Act, but leave that section delayed to give the Internet industries and Rights Holders tme to come up with a Code of Practice which will give some certainity to how that section should operate.

So if you don’t want to see an unworkable, deeply flawed law come into force next month, start e-mailing or contacting MPs. Otherwise you may find that those three videos you uploaded to You Tube have got you kicked off the Internet, or at leats your ISP.

It goes without saying that technology will only grow as an important part of NZ life, and the NZ economy. Hence the standard of our education system in relation to ICT education is vital to us.

Now I missed it at the time, but the NZ Computer Society has had a panel of professionals spend a massive amount of time assessing 18 NCEA ICT-related Technology Achievement Standards, to see which which of them were most suitable in preparing for tertiary study and for end-user computing.

Their 119 page report is here. And for those who want the summary, the press release is here. They key paragraph:

NZCS Chief Executive Paul Matthews today said he was horrified to discover that not a single Technology Achievement Standard proposed for access to ICT and Computing met the set criteria. “Secondary School Computing education should be about preparing our young people for further ICT-related study and for computing in general” Matthews said today. “This report has found that New Zealand’s current ICT-related Technology Standards are failing terribly on both counts”.

The NZCS is the professional education and standards body in the ICT sector. So when they say 0 out of 18 NCEA standards meet the grade, you have a problem. TUANZ have also expressed their concern and their frustration at the lack of progress.

NZCS makes a number of recommendations:

1. Creates appropriate achievement standards to address the assessment vacuum that exists in the area of Computer Science at the secondary school level.
   
2. Recognizes that Computer Science is NOT a “technology”. Computer Science is about computation (numeracy), logic, and the study of algorithms and problem solving within a computational paradigm. It needs a syllabus which defines a coherent body of knowledge, relevant practices, and associated achievement standards.
3. Removes computing from the grasp of the technology curriculum and align it with subject areas that are more relevant to the various disciplines. For Computer Science, Mathematics is the logical choice. End-user computing fits best with the subject areas that use the tools.
4. Establishes a rationale for defining achievement level criteria. For example, in achievement standards which require production of a product, the sole criterion for achieving should be that the product works according to specification (bar minor deficiencies) – i.e. is fit for purpose. Merit criteria should require that the product works (as for achieved) and has desirable qualities (such as well-documented, efficient, easy to use, robust, maintainable, extendable, …) and excellence requires the previous criteria plus planning and other deliverables which relate to the particular practice (not necessarily Technology) that is being assessed.
5. Creates externally assessed Achievement standards which assess a common body of knowledge under exam conditions similar to those available in the Mathematics curriculum.
6. Re-moderates the technology achievement standards with a view to aligning the cognitive levels to the NQF level definitions.
7. Surveys technology, computing, and potential computing teachers to gain insight on their perceptions of the value, relevance, and effectiveness of the existing technology achievement standards with respect to their effect on teaching workload and morale, and student attitudes towards computing as a future career.
8. Surveys year 10 – 13 students (and their parents) across the country to determine what motivates them into choosing (or not choosing) computing as an area of study at tertiary level.

The next Minister of Education should be looking at these as a priority. Our skills shortage will only get worse if we don’t even made the grade with our own students.

One of the areas NZ faces a skill shortage in, is ICT. This is dangerous as so much of the ICT industry underpins the rest of the economy.

NZCS is reported as looking at how to reverse the industry’s skills shortage, declining student numbers in ICT courses and project failure rates, and has suggested a professional ICT certification programme.

They have a discussion paper on their website for those in the industry who have a view.

My view is that ICT does need to lift its game and be seen as just as much a profession as (for example) law or accountancy. That is not to say they are the same, but the results of unqualified advice from any of those sectors can be equally harmful to a business. The certification proposal looks a  worthy idea to me.