A leading open-source technology provider warns New Zealand's digital infrastructure is critical to our national interests and should not be run by a single global tech giant.
Technology firm Catalyst said the government should prioritise local expertise to secure New Zealand's digital infrastructure.
"In an era where digital sovereignty and economic resilience are inseparable, our default government procurement model should change," Catalyst managing director Don Christie said.
"New Zealand should look to open source and open standards becoming the default for government procurement technology."
What are open source, open standards?
- Open standards were publicly available guidelines that ensured interoperability between different technologies.
- They differ from proprietary solutions which were privately owned software platforms and often managed by global tech giants, where the underlying code was kept secret.
- Customers can be charged ongoing licensing fees to use proprietary software.
The government's Budget had set out millions of dollars in new spending to improve digital infrastructure across a number of critical sectors, including defence, emergency services and health care, including $153.6 million to increase cyber security investment over the next four years to protect personal health data.
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"These latest technology initiatives, which will be critical to how our country functions during crises, present a vital opportunity," Christie said.
"By choosing open standards, the government can secure our digital infrastructure, build genuine local capability, and ensure public spending directly stimulates the New Zealand technology economy."
Christie said the government needed to avoid locking New Zealand into vendor dependency or an unorganised tangle of outdated software systems.
"Currently, this over-reliance on foreign proprietary systems lacks competition, meaning our most powerful fix is to reform how we buy technology."
Christie said there was a growing movement for sovereign nations, including United Kingdom, Denmark and France, to adopt open standards in order to support technology innovation.
Open source referred to software whose source code was freely available for anyone to use, modify and share, such as the Linux operating system, which was developed by a collaborative global community.
"New Zealand's local technology expertise is world-class and capable of securing our most critical technology systems at home," Christie said.
"We should look to local experts first, and prioritise providers who utilise open source and open standards platforms.
"New Zealand's local technology expertise is world-class and capable of securing our most critical technology systems at home."
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- Article: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/596711/new-zealand-s-digital-infrastructure-should-not-be-run-by-single-tech-giant-open-source-tech-firm-warns
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- Note from Nighthawk.NZ:
New Zealand need to truly think about digital sovereignty and not be controlled by Microsoft who can easily leak any information, which they have openly admitted they have done to foreign governments, Frances as deleted Windows from their governmental systems, not only capitalizing their digital sovereignty but saving millions of euro's a year. Germany and many other EU Countries are following this.
