New Zealand Organisations Must Continue To Invest In Technology For NZ To Become A World-leading Digital Nation

IT leaders rate Aotearoa as 6.3 out of 10 for technology adoption globally, down -0.1 from 2022 and -0.3 from 2021, with leaders referencing a lack of acceleration leading to us falling behind as a country overall, and a lack of scale and capital required to invest in or adopt new technologies in many sectors.

Cybersecurity, a growing digital agenda, resourcing, and the ongoing flow-on effects from external events were some of the key challenges our digital leaders faced in 2022. Organisations that had laid the foundations in previous years were able to roll out new solutions to realise value, optimise, and create efficiencies.

Technology Users Association New Zealand (TUANZ), in collaboration with TechLeaders Executive and One NZ, has released its 2023 Digital Priorities Report, which emphasises New Zealand digital leaders and businesses must find a way to minimise the impact of ongoing and hangover challenges from previous years and balance business-as-usual with chipping away at the backlog to ensure they can continue moving forward in their digital journey.

The aim of the report ‘Aotearoa’s digital priorities in 2023’ is to provide insight into the actual issues New Zealand digital leaders are facing and their priorities for the year ahead. This is the third year TUANZ has released the report, which was developed after realising that many reports released tend to focus on the macro trends of emerging technologies which are unlikely to impact New Zealand organisations in the next 12 months.

Top of the priority list for our digital leaders is access to talent, security & privacy, carbon free future, succeeding in a digital world, and the hangover challenges of 2022. Other topics of interest include digital equity, the rise of AI and automation technology and the new ways of working. Digital leaders also agreed that regulation and legislation around cybersecurity and data privacy is a policy issue that should be top of mind for politicians this year.

TUANZ Chair Tristan Illich says, “New Zealand organisations can’t afford to be left behind; they must continue to invest in technology and related services if we want to become a world-leading digital nation. From our interviews, we found that the overwhelming majority of the digital leaders expected their organisations to invest more (42%) or about the same (47%) this year in technology and related services than in 2022.”

Tech Leaders Executive Chair, Stuart Wakefield says, “Tech Leaders are highly optimistic about realising the potential from digital transformation investments, and overcoming many of the setbacks that have been the hallmark of the last few years of pandemic related disruption.

“Access to talent remains critical, and while the re-opening of borders has partially alleviated the pressure, recent changes to citizenship rights for Kiwis in Australia may yet have a net negative impact, so growing our domestic tech talent pipeline is critical, while also addressing long standing diversity and inclusion issues for the tech industry is a key focus.

“The impact of artificial intelligence will also rapidly change the composition of the workforce, not just for tech roles but across many parts of the economy in future.”

The benefits of technology like artificial intelligence are acknowledged by digital leaders, while highlighting the importance of data privacy and protection around its use.

One NZ Chief Enterprise Officer Lindsay Zwart says, “Cloud technology remains a huge opportunity for Aotearoa, and a vital tool to help tackle the current skills shortage. While digital working is a huge opportunity for us as a country, it’s vital that we protect customers and their data as they adopt this new technology.

“Cloud technology has been the genesis of the most exciting technology of the moment - artificial intelligence. There is no doubt this innovation will be a catalyst for better business outcomes, but care must be taken to ensure data privacy and data ethics policies are considered before AI is deployed.”

You can view the report here.

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