Panui 3rd March
Kia ora koutou ITP members and supporters, One of the programmes ITP operate is Tahi Rua Toru Tech, a national education programme designed for teachers to easily pick up and delver the digital technologies curriculum in their classroom. Every year we are blown away by the uptake, in 2022 over 16,000 ākonga (learners) and 1,900+ kaiako (teachers) involved. You can read more about the programme last year here. At the end of each year teams can enter a national competition, shoutout to the winners of the 2022 national finals (you can read more about these here) - congratulations on your inspiring mahi:
As CEO of ITP I spend about half of my time focused on pathways into the workforce, the education system and working with providers of education at all levels. Getting the settings in these spaces oriented to enable the growth our workforce needs in the coming years and for the longer term is essentially. As is ensuring there are opportunities for students to enter the workforce in culturally safe and supportive environments. Sadly there is evidence of churn by those we don’t usually see in digital technology both at education and early entry into the workforce level. You will have seen the fabulous mahi Auckland Unlimited commissioned last year identifying the barriers for Māori to enter and stay in digital technology roles. It gave us powerful insight into the changes needed but ensuring these changes are implemented, resourcing is allocated within both education providers (government funded and private) and businesses is key. Opening young minds with programmes like Tahi Rua Toru Tech is just one small piece of this complex puzzle.
The European Commission, US and Canadian Governments led a charge on banning TikTok from government employed staff devices over concerns about spyware and security this week. It seems the GCSB do not have the power to implement an equivalent ban here in Aotearoa NZ - what do we think of this? Is it good that our government doesn’t hold the legislative power to implement such a ban? Or is this just one more example of how our government have been asleep at the wheel when it comes to protecting the country electronically? This is one of my hobby horses. We as a nation invest heavily in our physical security with a Navy, strict border controls at every point of entry and some of the strongest legislation in the world on entry to our physical boarders - yet we woefully underinvest in cyber protections for our electronic boarders, have a fragmented cyber response (GCSB, CERT, NZ Police, DIA etc etc all holding small roles), no minister for Cyber and unlike our Five Eyes partners have not implemented governing legislation. Rant over.
Since I started on global technology things. We’ve posted a few blogs recently on the massive layoffs by the dominant technology companies and this week was no different with Salesforce continuing their cuts as Marc Benioff follows Larry Ellison’s profit playbook then confuses the market as it emerges Matthew McConaughey is paid $USD10m per annum for creative advice. Speaking of the market being unhappy, Tesla’s failure to announce their budget EV wasn’t received well with an immediate 7% drop in their share price! Meanwhile Twitter also continue to lay off staff. Meanwhile something I had never even thought about was the economic impact of weeds on crop farming but it seems the solution is high tech with lasers, drones and AI involved - awesome.
Peter’s editorial today also mentioned the TikTok ban focusing on Censorship, China’s ChatGPT clones (and banning TikTok). He suggests we will eventually fall into line with our Five Eyes partners on this as we did with the Huawei 5G network. Peter also wrote a great article earlier in the week on one of my favourite tools - Python - and fills us in on Kiwi PyCon, happening later in the year in the beautiful Southland (where I am going on holiday next). Brendan is away this week so there isn’t a new cartoon, instead here is one of my favourites that seems very topical considering my rant above.
Signing off after another long week and wishing you all a wonderful weekend. Kia pai tō rā whakatā, Vic
