panui Aug 11
Kia ora koutou IT Professionals members and supporters, welcome to this weeks digital pānui.
Another week has flown by! Looking at my forward calendar I am travelling every week from now until the end of October, and with “silly season” beyond that expect this will continue into November and December, AirNZ is the greatest beneficiary of this of course but I did fly Air Chathams ex Paraparaumu to Auckland for a change recently. It reduced my driving time but I dearly missed the koru lounge for convenience of working.
What is all this travel for you ask? Well conference’s - the CIO Summit in Auckland next week, a roadshow of SFIA events listed below, the innovation expo in Ōtautahi ChCh and so on. I am also involved in the organisation of the annual CITRENZ conference which is focused on digital technology Vocational Education, the call for papers is out and you can register now too.
The final Technology Industry hui with Minister Andersen is schedule for next week, final before they break for elections. There are so many top of mind topics to discuss with her as ever - skills and talent, digital equity, AI, Cyber Security to name a few. It’s been an interesting exercise reflecting on how much activity there has been this year for very moderate progress on these fronts. My key concern is to crystallise the requests we make of her to pass onto the range of agencies tasked with aspects of the digital technology space.
Thinking about this reminded me of the Tech Sector Manifesto we all wrote 6 years ago where we suggested the creating of a dedicated Ministry for the Future to tackle the rapidly changing landscape we find ourselves in today. My experience working with Ministers has been extensive since so if I was to tackle that one again I would recommend a Minister for the Future with mandate to work across government functions vs a Ministry bringing those functions together.
Check out our 2017 Manifesto - much of this is still as relevant today and remains unchanged sadly.
Bridging the Gap Podcast
This week I speak to Julie Crisford who works in the world of innovation, protecting intellectual property and commercialising products - so another new wonderful role in the digital technology space.
I am loving meeting all of these fabulous people in such diverse roles and sharing their stories with you - because you can’t be what you can’t see! (Or hear in this case). In case you have missed them, all of our other episodes can be accessed via the website - Dani on design, Dila on education, Elinor on working in SAAS in Tel Aviv, Selva on community management and Izzi on the importance of communication skills and cyber security.
Subscribe to Bridging The Gap via Apple or Spotify, or watch on YouTube.
Because you can't be what you can't see.
SFIA - Skills Framework for the Information Age
IT Professionals has been working to develop the SFIA framework since 2011 - check out this What is SFIA blog from way back then.
About 5 years ago I was involved in a project to assess skills frameworks working across industry and government, this process selected SFIA as the one which broached both hard technical skills and soft skills and included (then) emerging roles eg: in Cyber Security. The NZ Government has since purchased a country license of SFIA we can all use! yay.
The whole idea of a framework like this is to enable employees and employers to measure progress in a given role - by selecting key capabilities for a position description, then measuring progress through levels of achievement. For most skills defined by SFIA the progression mapping is from Junior level through to Senior.
Not a great explanation I know. So check out the DEV/OPS example here - this outlines DEV/OPS related skills, Focus areas for development in a role (from entry through to senior), improving DEV/OPS job descriptions etc.
SFIA Roadshow - coming to a town near you
Over the coming weeks I will be tripping around the country with Daniel Merriott who is a SFIA consultant to hold in person events, introducing SFIA and workshopping with participants what you would like to see in the next version of the SFIA framework skills and capabilities wise?
We are both involved in the international body who defines SFIA so this will be a great opportunity to hear from people working in our industry on emerging and prioritised skills and capabilities for roles.
Date and locations of events locked in so far are:
More dates are coming for Auckland, Napier and others. Hope to see you there.
PS: I will be up in the Manawatū on September 14th for a breakfast event if you are in the region hope to see you there.
Blogs this week
I have started a blog on the party policies on digital technology - starting with ACT - so will try to get more of those out ahead of our debate to help steer your questions. This inspired Brendan’s cartoon today - Digital Tech Election Deal. More of these coming your way as soon as parties get their policies up!
Peter’s editorial - The School Cellphone ban is a bad idea - suggests leaving it to the schools. I speak to parents and teachers about this all the time, such a complex issue. I can see both sides of the coin - online bullying happening during school hours, time wasted with distractions vs the safety and productivity gains of using phones as part of the toolset in the classroom. Some schools only deliver messages and timetables to their students electronically, so need phones to be present.
One theme I hear from both teachers and parents consistently is deal with the Vaping problem first, kids camping out in toilets vaping deterring others from using the loos, the potential health impacts - it’s back to the smoking behaviour and debate of my childhood. More on the impact of vaping can be found here.
On balance I agree with Peter, let the schools decide what their own rules should be and I also agree with the concerns of parents and teachers about the need to focus on Vaping as well as cellphone use (based on my subjective asking of questions style of survey).
Our guest blog this week is - Worldcoin is scanning eyeballs to build a global ID and finance system. Governments are not impressed - this one was new to me and fascinating to read about.
My AI wrap this week was written by Bard - now that was an interesting exercise. It didn’t save me time as I needed to learn how to get the best out of the tool and the inaccuracy rate was much higher than ChatGPT but it has some nice features as well. In the wrap lots of great topics surfaced this week - Facial recognition gone wrong, Pak’n’save’s recipe generator went very wrong, copyright issues still surfacing, AI and War (eek), new automation tools for Scrum Masters and to capture your Technical Debt, aviation industry climate fight using AI and a collaboration between IBM and NASA to name a few.
Peter also wrote earlier in the week - Spark’s bid to overhaul the IT service desk - the introduction of a new service tool ServiceFlex to automate their response, Peter did find out that if you need to speak to a human that is still on offer too.
Coming soon
We have a number of panel based webinars coming your way - on really topical issues like the state of Cyber Security in Aotearoa NZ, returning to the office from both an employee and employers perspective, the ABC’s of the digital tech space in 2023. Plus I am working with NZTech to try and line up a political party debate, it’s proving somewhat challenging to get everyone we need in one place on the same day but we are getting close to locking something in.
Watch this space for many great events.
Other News in Short
On the last one, IT Professionals have offered full membership and ongoing industry mentoring for recipients of NZSE’s Tūrama Scholars Programme - so I am really looking forward to working with them on this.
Te Reo Māori Digital Technology terms
Using a new resource this week, Core Education’s glossary, which contains some beautiful phrases to describe aspects of our digital world.
- Computational thinking for digital technologies - Whakaaro Rorohiko
- Computer and human interactions - Tangata me te rorohiko
- Creators of digital content - Kaihanga ihirangi matihiko
- Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes - Te Hoahoa me te Whanake i ngā Hua Matihiko
Finally
One of my many projects right now is bringing focus to the history of digital technology in Aotearoa NZ, learning the stories of those who have come before us. I am also working through all of IT Professionals archive boxes to find fabulous artefacts from events and activities that changed the course of this industry and profession over the last 65 years. It’s a fascinating project to be working on and I feel so privileged to be finding a way to honour the shoulders we stand on as a profession.
And I haven’t even asked you how do we feel about Bird of the Year becoming Bird of the Century????
Ka kite anō Vic
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