Speaker 1: This week on the Business of Tech powered by two
Speaker 1: Degrees Business, we're talking DOGE, the Trump Administration's Department of
Speaker 1: Government Efficiency. It's tearing through government agencies, laying off tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of public servants, and dismantling entire departments such
Speaker 1: as US AID. It's all in aid off a grand
Speaker 1: plan to slash the US deficit, which sees America pay
Speaker 1: iwatering amounts each year to service national debt. Here's how
Speaker 1: Elol Musk, doge's chief architect, describes the mission to Fox News.
Speaker 2: Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars,
Speaker 2: so from a nominal deficit of two trillion to track
Speaker 2: cut the deficit in half to one trillion, or looked
Speaker 2: at it in toilet federal spanning, to drop the federal
Speaker 2: spanning from seven trillion to sex trillion. We want to
Speaker 2: reduce the spending by eliminating waste and fort reduce the
Speaker 2: spanning by fifteen percent, which seems really quite achievable. The
Speaker 2: government is not efficient and there's a lot of Western frauds,
Speaker 2: so we feel confident that fifteen percent reduction can can
Speaker 2: be done without affecting any of the critical government services.
Speaker 1: Sounds great in theory, but critics argue that the efficiency
Speaker 1: drive is really a thinly veiled attempt to weed out
Speaker 1: the so called deep state that Trump believes trying to
Speaker 1: derail his first presidency. They also claim all hurt US
Speaker 1: citizens by radically reducing key functions like Social Security and
Speaker 1: the National Institutes of Health. Even the Department of Education
Speaker 1: is getting a massive cut. DOAGE claims it's amassed one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty billion US in savings already, thirty percent
Speaker 1: of it from contract grant and lease cancellations. Musk tells
Speaker 1: us that less than fifteen percent of the spending being
Speaker 1: cut is out and out fraud. The next six to
Speaker 1: twelve months will reveal the impact of DOGE on the
Speaker 1: USA government and on the services that citizens enjoy, but
Speaker 1: already governments around the world are considering their own cost
Speaker 1: cutting drives. We got off to an early start even
Speaker 1: before the Coalition government came into office, with labor trimming
Speaker 1: public servant headcount. That's accelerated under the Coalition, which spending
Speaker 1: cuts to programs across the board with a similar aim
Speaker 1: to cut national debt. We've also got David Seymour's Ministry
Speaker 1: of regulation tasked with identifying and cutting superfluous rules and regulations.
Speaker 1: Let's be fair, doge is something else entirely with Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's team of young geeks given unprecedented access to government records,
Speaker 1: it's ripe for conflicts of interest as well, with musks
Speaker 1: companies SpaceX and Tesla having received billions in contracts and
Speaker 1: subsidies from the US government. But I think most people
Speaker 1: have some sympathy for the idea of smaller government and
Speaker 1: cutting red tape and using technology to gain more visibility
Speaker 1: into government spending and procuring services in a smarter way.
Speaker 1: So how could we do doge properly here in New Zealand. Well,
Speaker 1: I assembled a super smart panel of people to try
Speaker 1: and find out. Joining me this week are Rob Campbell,
Speaker 1: Ben Reid, and Paul Quickendon.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Rob Campbell has been a board director and chair of
Speaker 1: companies like SkyCity, Tourism Holdings and Somerset Group, as well
Speaker 1: as sitting on the boards of government agencies like the
Speaker 1: Environmental Protection Agency and tefatu Ura Health New Zealand, where
Speaker 1: he was sacked as board chair in February twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: For a LinkedIn post, he wrote that criticized the National
Speaker 1: Party's policy on the Three Waters reform. If anyone knows
Speaker 1: where the inefficiencies in our largest government agencies are, it's
Speaker 1: probably rob Ben Reid returns to the show the christ
Speaker 1: Church Futurist and tech can sultant. He's given a lot
Speaker 1: of thought to how technology can play a role in
Speaker 1: creating a more efficient and fairer government in everything from
Speaker 1: policymaking to electronic voting, and Paul quickened In rounds out
Speaker 1: the panel. Paul's the chief commercial officer and head of
Speaker 1: the New Zealand operation of Easy Crypto, the largest locally
Speaker 1: owned crypto exchange, which last month was acquired by Australian
Speaker 1: owned swift FX. Paul thinks a lot about how decentralized
Speaker 1: technologies like the blockchain and smart contracts can be applied
Speaker 1: to the big problems facing society. So, without further ado,
Speaker 1: here's my chat with the Doge Panel this week on
Speaker 1: the Business of Tech. Rob Ben Paul, welcome to the
Speaker 1: Business of Tech. Thanks so much for coming on. You're
Speaker 1: Jordder so like me, you've probably been watching with a
Speaker 1: mix of horror, fascination and sort of amusement. What's been
Speaker 1: going on in the US with DOGE, the Department of
Speaker 1: Government Efficiency, the Elon Musk led efforts, and boy, it's
Speaker 1: just amazing what's coming out every week some of the
Speaker 1: things that he has done. Obviously big layoffs in some
Speaker 1: government departments, some government departments effectively being dismantled, the likes
Speaker 1: of us AID. You're seeing the United States Digital Services,
Speaker 1: an agency that was run out of the White House
Speaker 1: that's been basically absorbed into DOGE. You've got Elon Musks
Speaker 1: essentially saying I need the source code of government to
Speaker 1: do this properly. I need to get into every database,
Speaker 1: look at every data feed to make sure that what
Speaker 1: I'm being told about what is going on in government
Speaker 1: is accurate. He's talking about magic money computers that exist
Speaker 1: in the US government. A lot of people have said, well, duh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what the Treasury and others do. They print and
Speaker 1: manufacture money. But you've also got a vein I suspect
Speaker 1: you agree as well. Of Look, this is actually a
Speaker 1: useful thing to do to look at efficiency, waste, and
Speaker 1: even fraud. And Musca said he thinks it's probably about
Speaker 1: ten to twenty percent of its actual fraud that is
Speaker 1: going on where they see they need to fix things.
Speaker 1: The rest of it is inefficiency, and it's probably something
Speaker 1: you can all relate to. We're all frustrated about how
Speaker 1: slow moving and bureaucratic government can be and that is
Speaker 1: leading to real problems in society, inequality, slow access to
Speaker 1: for instance, healthcare. We've just in the last couple of
Speaker 1: days we heard some horrific stories about people having to
Speaker 1: wait for cardiograms and potentially that leading to fatal conditions.
Speaker 1: So we know there is an efficiency, there are bottlenecks there,
Speaker 1: but really Keen, first of all, we will stell it
Speaker 1: with you, Rob, with your extensive experience both in business
Speaker 1: and obviously as the chair of Ta Fatuura for period
Speaker 1: as well, overseeing huge government spending there and a big bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: What do you make of dog and is there a
Speaker 1: kernel of value on what they're attempting.
Speaker 4: There's a kernel of value in continuously reevaluating what you're
Speaker 4: doing to ensure that you are doing it efficiently and effectively,
Speaker 4: whether you're in private business or government, and governments are
Speaker 4: notoriously not good at this, So there's value in that.
Speaker 4: Whether letting a mad axe man into the front door
Speaker 4: and having him roam around the government is a good
Speaker 4: way of doing that. I'm much less convinced. I don't
Speaker 4: think there's much to be said for the way they're
Speaker 4: going about it. But that doesn't mean that there isn't
Speaker 4: a need to have continual reevaluation of that kind going on.
Speaker 4: But as has happened here much lesser levels. The key
Speaker 4: to doing any of these exercises is to understand the mechanism,
Speaker 4: the model that you're dealing with. Understand what is happening there,
Speaker 4: not just deal with it, which with the metrics which
Speaker 4: are coming out the far end, but understand what the
Speaker 4: model is you're working with. And if you don't do that,
Speaker 4: you can go and roam around. Accountants to it quite often,
Speaker 4: and just as dangerously, you can go and roam around.
Speaker 4: And so we want to cut this, we want to
Speaker 4: cut that, we want to do this. But if you
Speaker 4: don't understand to come back to it, don't understand the
Speaker 4: model of what's going on here, then you're probably going
Speaker 4: to cause as much damage as you'll do good. And
Speaker 4: I suspect that with the way they're approaching it in
Speaker 4: the US, that's highly likely to be the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's a big criticism of DOGE so far
Speaker 1: is that the team members, while a lot of them
Speaker 1: are skilled computer programmers, some of the very young, gifted
Speaker 1: people that have come out of Tesla and other companies
Speaker 1: like that, they sort of lack any understanding of government processes, contracts,
Speaker 1: how grants work, the actual realities of working in government.
Speaker 1: So it's one thing to take a sort of a
Speaker 1: tech focus on this, and they know how efficient tech
Speaker 1: can be, but the actual workings of government is a
Speaker 1: completely different thing. And without doing it in conjunction with
Speaker 1: all those people who have that domain knowledge, I guess
Speaker 1: you're going to run into trouble.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and two steps there, Peter one, I agree with
Speaker 4: the way you frame it that I would go even
Speaker 4: further and say that it's not enough just to understand the
Speaker 4: current machinery, because it's a fair bet the current machinery
Speaker 4: is clumsy and wrong and obscuring things. You've got to
Speaker 4: go back to that real model of what it is
Speaker 4: we're trying to do here, How are we trying to
Speaker 4: do it? Does that make sense? And the technology and
Speaker 4: the accounting and everything else really follows on after that,
Speaker 4: You know, you can send in some bright tech people.
Speaker 4: There's not really any different descending and some bright accountants
Speaker 4: to look at one of these things. If you really
Speaker 4: don't understand what you're trying to achieve and have a
Speaker 4: good model of what you try to achieve, the danger
Speaker 4: is that you will just cause distruction, not creation.
Speaker 1: And what's your take on Doge? Obviously you've written a
Speaker 1: book last year, Fast Forward Our Tailor, which is really
Speaker 1: advocating for digital first government, things like legislating full service
Speaker 1: application programming interfaces to make government a lot more efficient
Speaker 1: and equitable. What's your take on what you've seen sort
Speaker 1: of unfold in the US with Doge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like Rob says, sort of going in there with
Speaker 3: a chainsaw is you know, we'll wait to see how
Speaker 3: it all turns out. But I mean I've listened. I
Speaker 3: think the US is a very different political environment to
Speaker 3: hear and out there are and I think what I
Speaker 3: had a very interesting podcast recently where the Gray Area Podcasts,
Speaker 3: where the speaker was basically describing the underlying political access here.
Speaker 3: Whereas you've got status quoests who seem to think that
Speaker 3: everything's fine, versus brokennests who think that everything is broken,
Speaker 3: and you have the extreme brokennest wing have now taken
Speaker 3: hold of the leaves of power, and so really they
Speaker 3: really didn't think it was worth fixing, if you if
Speaker 3: you like, So, I think part of the strategy here
Speaker 3: is to go in and just utterly dismantle what is there,
Speaker 3: and it can't be any more broken than it was before. So,
Speaker 3: you know, I think that, as I say, the US
Speaker 3: context is very different to hear it in out you know,
Speaker 3: the book. In my book, you know, it was really
Speaker 3: thinking about how emerging technology can provide solutions to deliver
Speaker 3: our rutcomes. And if we agree that productivity, accessibility, efficiency
Speaker 3: are all outcomes of you know, horizon points we should
Speaker 3: be aiming towards, then you know, employing some of these
Speaker 3: modern technologies is arguably, you know, the way to achieve
Speaker 3: that very quickly. Yeah, So look some of the ideas
Speaker 3: that I you know, I like to reimagine the state
Speaker 3: quote and I wouldn't say that Altibor's government is broken,
Speaker 3: but I'd say it has a whole lot of inertia
Speaker 3: inside it. You have a permanent public service constitutionally, which
Speaker 3: leads to almost a culture of risk avoidance and and
Speaker 3: you know, reluctance to rise significant change and if you
Speaker 3: if you think about, you know, the modern services that
Speaker 3: we're that we're consuming from, you know, the frontier technology
Speaker 3: firms right now, then they are all software interfaces. And
Speaker 3: so if you could re imagine the service delivery channels
Speaker 3: of government as being software and application programming interface, and
Speaker 3: increasingly that you could have an AI agent that would
Speaker 3: interact with government services, then I think you could probably
Speaker 3: take out aultimate a lot of the roles that are happening,
Speaker 3: you know, in government right now, and and actually build
Speaker 3: of a better service outcomes there. Finally, those better service
Speaker 3: outcomes is the front front loading of the whole process
Speaker 3: that they're certainly not doing in the in the US
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, and we'll come back to some of the suggestions
Speaker 1: you have in Fast Forward al Tara around this that
Speaker 1: may help. Paul. You're at easy Crypto at the moment,
Speaker 1: you're really passionate and understand blockchain technologies, and you're actually
Speaker 1: running a hackathon on this particular issue. Was this sort
Speaker 1: of inspired by Doage seeing what was going on in
Speaker 1: the US and thinking, actually, could we do this in
Speaker 1: a sensible way and get some of our most innovative
Speaker 1: technologists to contribute to it.
Speaker 5: So we wrote a series of provocations for the Hack
Speaker 5: of Time some time ago, and at that time, the
Speaker 5: rumors of what DOGE was going to be and what
Speaker 5: it's turned out to be a very different and what
Speaker 5: I mean by that, as DOGE was trying to drive
Speaker 5: some efficiency, there was talk of what chains being embedded
Speaker 5: in some US processes to streamline stuff and where you know,
Speaker 5: I represent a sector that believes that blockchains do have
Speaker 5: a role to play and some of that, and so
Speaker 5: we write a series of provocations. But it's not just
Speaker 5: about building government departments on blockchains and eliminating and that's
Speaker 5: not that's not what the Hack of pons about. It
Speaker 5: was just really trying to get people to think about
Speaker 5: some real world use cases and those solutions that would
Speaker 5: have meaningful value. And given you know, we all touch government,
Speaker 5: central or local government in some way, shape and form, like,
Speaker 5: it's an easy thing for us to all from the
Speaker 5: outside look in and go maybe we could do this
Speaker 5: a little bit better. And you know, I think as
Speaker 5: citizens were allowed to question our services are delivered to us,
Speaker 5: and I think that's part of a good robust democracy.
Speaker 5: But we are not advocating for what's you know, the
Speaker 5: ideologically driven stuff that's coming out of DOGE. Now, that's
Speaker 5: that's not where we started. And you know, again like
Speaker 5: the one that I think you know, we were faring
Speaker 5: to around, could you run in an expense system a
Speaker 5: government expenses a blockchain. That was just one of maybe
Speaker 5: twenty five provocations to the teams. So you know, we're
Speaker 5: just trying to get people who's great mat of stimulated
Speaker 5: when we wrote this sometime again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great, and I'm sure that's something actually the
Speaker 1: likes of Judith Collins, the Minister for Digitizing Government, is
Speaker 1: actually going to welcome, you know, sort of innovation in
Speaker 1: this space. But Rob, you know, you're the one who's
Speaker 1: had the most experience actually on the inside of working
Speaker 1: with big government departments. I think at one point you
Speaker 1: said New Zealand health system you described as a blocked
Speaker 1: digestive system, which is a nice metaphor for it. But
Speaker 1: can you sort of elaborate on that in a big
Speaker 1: department like that? And health is a sort of I
Speaker 1: guess is a special case and they are working to
Speaker 1: try and fix it. But where are the sorts of
Speaker 1: places that you really see the inefficiency and the wastage
Speaker 1: that just really starts to result in a degradation of
Speaker 1: service for citizens.
Speaker 4: Well, I think I think health was and still is
Speaker 4: a particularly ramshackle. It doesn't really even deserve to be
Speaker 4: called a system. It's a kind of a ramshackle assembly
Speaker 4: of different systems. And if you take, for example, the
Speaker 4: recent stuff about t FUTU or are trying to run
Speaker 4: the finances on a spreadsheet, Well, actually what they were
Speaker 4: trying to do was take a whole lot of systems
Speaker 4: that were producing different financial information and had to assemble
Speaker 4: it somehow had never been assembled before, and the obvious
Speaker 4: way to assemble it was on a spreadsheet. It wasn't
Speaker 4: that anyone had started out wanting to manage it that way,
Speaker 4: to be fair to the people currently running that. But
Speaker 4: the reimagining thing, it sounds a bit of a grand phrase,
Speaker 4: but there is enormous scope to improve these systems. I'm
Speaker 4: working with a small fintech setup at the moment that
Speaker 4: has some ideas about payments and accountability and audits and
Speaker 4: all those kind of things that could improve distribution of benefits,
Speaker 4: for example, And there are any of these ideas around
Speaker 4: and what there was what there needs to be is
Speaker 4: an openness to consider, apply and experiment with those within
Speaker 4: the public service, which there isn't. So what you had
Speaker 4: in health was a whole lot of ideas that had
Speaker 4: been thrown at what was when Tavardaora was formed, the
Speaker 4: largest software development house in New Zealand, accumulating people who
Speaker 4: were defending often incompatible projects that were working against one another,
Speaker 4: and simply because no one had really stood back and
Speaker 4: properly thought about what are we trying to achieve here,
Speaker 4: what are the priorities, what are the available technologies. So
Speaker 4: they were basically trying to assess various offers that were
Speaker 4: being made to them by various other providers and then
Speaker 4: rebuild them in some way. So it was no wonder.
Speaker 4: It was a mess, and I think that's not uncommon.
Speaker 4: So some of that culture has to change, but I
Speaker 4: don't really think that's all that difficult. I mean, New
Speaker 4: Zealand does have a pretty active ecosystem of people coming
Speaker 4: up with quite practical ideas which are not moonshots by
Speaker 4: any stretch of the imagination, but are immediately applicable, which
Speaker 4: could be picked up by government departments. And there is
Speaker 4: a degree of sclerosis within those government departments, as there
Speaker 4: is within within a number of larger private companies too.
Speaker 4: I think the cause of that is a lack of
Speaker 4: understanding both of the models of what is being done,
Speaker 4: but also of the technologies at politician level, at board
Speaker 4: member level, and at senior executive level. There are a
Speaker 4: lot of people within the public service that understand, are
Speaker 4: open to and would welcome innovation, but it is really
Speaker 4: being stopped by a lack of understanding from the type.
Speaker 3: In my view, I totally agree with that, and I
Speaker 3: think what I'd also add is structurally the way that
Speaker 3: the bureaucracy is structured into these monolithics, siloed departments where
Speaker 3: actually a technology student will be architected with common components
Speaker 3: across all of these and they're you know, there were
Speaker 3: you know, there is a g CDO trying to coordinate
Speaker 3: across all of them. But actually, you know, services like identity,
Speaker 3: like payments would be common across the whole government platform,
Speaker 3: and yet every individual department still operates their own to
Speaker 3: some degree. And so, you know, I think there's this
Speaker 3: fundamentally re architecting the bureaucracy is going to be a
Speaker 3: consequence of attempting to digitize the whole government, and these
Speaker 3: these departments are not in the mood for that right.
Speaker 3: They operate with a with a large degree of inerture.
Speaker 3: As I said, So, one of the considerations I would
Speaker 3: say is why do we have permanent government departments, government agencies?
Speaker 3: Why do we not just the same way as we
Speaker 3: have an election every three years, Why don't we just
Speaker 3: put us sinessa limit that you know, a government department
Speaker 3: will live for five years and then it will be
Speaker 3: recycled and shut down. And so you know, why could
Speaker 3: you not actually derive some of this permanent refreshment of
Speaker 3: your bureaucracy into some legislation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, one of the ideas in the book,
Speaker 1: as I said at the start Digital First, government legislated
Speaker 1: full Services API. No government service can be enabled without
Speaker 1: API implementation. And for people who don't understand what that is,
Speaker 1: this is a sort of a plug and essentially that
Speaker 1: allows data to be transferred between systems in a seamless
Speaker 1: sort of way. So, and that's something I hear a
Speaker 1: lot across government. It is very siloed, and it's sort
Speaker 1: of by design, partly for the reasons that I think
Speaker 1: you've alluded to that they don't want to change, but
Speaker 1: also citizens don't necessarily want to change. We don't even
Speaker 1: want a digital driver's license in this country. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of opposition to putting data all in one place,
Speaker 1: even if there's a good case that it's going to
Speaker 1: help people get more equitable access.
Speaker 5: So my take on all of this conversation is that
Speaker 5: it's when you are in health and you're a nurse.
Speaker 5: You're very clear what you're doing and the goals you
Speaker 5: know is the patient right in front of you. But
Speaker 5: as you start to get further away your loose side
Speaker 5: of the outcomes you're trying to deliver. It happens in
Speaker 5: big companies. I used to work for a tower communications company.
Speaker 5: It happens there as well, and you can get fixated
Speaker 5: on your little project and your little thing and have
Speaker 5: no actual connection to the outcome you're trying to do
Speaker 5: the thing. The observable thing for me is that across
Speaker 5: all of the bureocracy that is government is there's no
Speaker 5: single vision or platforms. And you know, you've talked you
Speaker 5: know being and I agree with some of what you said.
Speaker 5: I may have some challenges with some others parts of
Speaker 5: what you said, but that's okay. You know, things about
Speaker 5: identity and access management, how that's done, my personal information,
Speaker 5: how that is shared or not shared. Payments because it's
Speaker 5: still about moving money and did you money around. Those
Speaker 5: sorts of things all should be a foundation blocks for
Speaker 5: every government department that builds on it. But that's not
Speaker 5: how it's been constructed. And it's because they were organically developed,
Speaker 5: you know, as they were digitizing. They're probably digitized at
Speaker 5: different times. You know, I can remember before the dhvs
Speaker 5: became an amalgamated set, like they were just hospitals, So
Speaker 5: you know, they all kind of grew and then you
Speaker 5: have such huge technology debt that trying to bring it
Speaker 5: together what you're talking about being which is the Amazon
Speaker 5: way and API first, but you had a very charismatic,
Speaker 5: single leader at the top who was able to enforce
Speaker 5: that stuff and doing that through a public service, that's
Speaker 5: a real challenge, and you know, you almost get to
Speaker 5: a point in time where you have to say, we
Speaker 5: have to start a new we have to start with
Speaker 5: some foundational building blocks and starting new.
Speaker 4: I think you also have to have regard to the
Speaker 4: way finance and spending ability is spread through the public service.
Speaker 4: It really operates on what I've always seen is kind
Speaker 4: of a jamjar theory where there's an appropriation of money
Speaker 4: for a particular purpose, which is to find ahead of time,
Speaker 4: and that's what's available for that purpose, and that goes
Speaker 4: into that jam jar. And if you're managing a public
Speaker 4: service operation, you have a whole set of these jam
Speaker 4: jars which have been predetermined for you, and what you're
Speaker 4: not doing is really ever sitting back and seeing where
Speaker 4: the money would be most effectively spent, So you are
Speaker 4: spending it out of each jar, and that does lead
Speaker 4: to a kind of a very inefficient decision making system
Speaker 4: as well. So my point is it's embedded in the
Speaker 4: way they're financed, embedded in the way that they have
Speaker 4: the ability to spend, which entrenches it so that actually
Speaker 4: saving some money or doing something better in one part
Speaker 4: of the operation doesn't necessarily make any progress for you.
Speaker 5: Again, that's where we'd think blockchain a role to play,
Speaker 5: because if a blockchain system was there and every government
Speaker 5: department could see that someone's building a brand new payment system,
Speaker 5: you had some sort of edict that said, why don't
Speaker 5: you reuse what we've got rather than build something new.
Speaker 5: Those types of things is where you know, we think
Speaker 5: blockchains are really powerful because they're quite transparent in that regard,
Speaker 5: and they're also really good at managing the flow of
Speaker 5: information because it's always there, you know. That's kind of
Speaker 5: the other key element of blockchains. And so having a
Speaker 5: system where what someone did in twenty twenty three is
Speaker 5: available to the people in twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 5: so they can kind of see the evolution, I think
Speaker 5: is also a powerful thing around blockchain. So that's why, Peter,
Speaker 5: you know, we did have these publications written. So we
Speaker 5: do think there are good uses for blockchain technology in
Speaker 5: the public sector, but it's not a be all in
Speaker 5: or we're not trying to take it all over.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would say that every government in the
Speaker 3: West world, in the democratic world, is going to be
Speaker 3: having the same conversation right now. The UK announced last
Speaker 3: week kis that I think gives forty five billion pounds
Speaker 3: of efficiencies of cost cutting from AI and digitization their initiative,
Speaker 3: and so I think, you know, the Elon Musk led
Speaker 3: Doge initiative in the US is driving this conversation of worldwide,
Speaker 3: and I think that's an opportunity because if every government
Speaker 3: is having the same challenges. Then let's coordinate, let's cooperate,
Speaker 3: let's build open gov stack and I'm sure it just
Speaker 3: exists so that you can basically just coordinate and take
Speaker 3: the best bits from what everybody else is building all
Speaker 3: around the world blockchain, but other open source components as well,
Speaker 3: and that would be The other principle absolutely is that
Speaker 3: unless there is a compelling reason why the software that
Speaker 3: is deployed inside government needs to be closed source, then
Speaker 3: as a principle, everything that is deployed needs to be
Speaker 3: open source. That also mitigates against the enclosure of of
Speaker 3: government services by large technology companies who have managed to
Speaker 3: basically build significant footprint underneath government services that exists, and
Speaker 3: that's going to be quite hard in future if we
Speaker 3: don't change direction towards more open source, flexible software to
Speaker 3: actually get to wean ourselves off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a big bone of contention with our local
Speaker 1: tech companies. The likes of Ian McCrae from Orion Healthcare.
Speaker 1: It felt like he was being his head against the
Speaker 1: brick wall dealing with our health system because that big,
Speaker 1: big tech procurement is so entrenched, the likes of Microsoft's
Speaker 1: and AWS. We have a cloud first strategy and government,
Speaker 1: and they are the default providers to offer that.
Speaker 3: The political climate has changed, right, so they are effectively
Speaker 3: beholden to a very unpredictable, unstable government which will potentially
Speaker 3: could add tariffs reverse tariffs to the cost of those
Speaker 3: and so it would be very at idea I think
Speaker 3: to build some resilience and diversity in voice into where
Speaker 3: we're procuring most of the platforms we're running our then
Speaker 3: it systems on. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I think often government under official government officials often
Speaker 4: underestimate the extent to which those very large mega vendors
Speaker 4: are running their own business model quite effectively too. And
Speaker 4: it may coincide with your needs it or it may not,
Speaker 4: but it's not The aim is not that and so
Speaker 4: the more we can take a open attitude towards that,
Speaker 4: the better. And I think for a non technologist like me,
Speaker 4: which I say straight away I am, the more you
Speaker 4: get involved in the stuff, the more you learn how
Speaker 4: much better protection there is in terms of accountability, auditability,
Speaker 4: and transparency in open systems. So totally agree with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Rob. One of the premise of DOGE is that
Speaker 1: they need sort of access to the source code of government.
Speaker 1: Is they don't trust the government officials. You know, they
Speaker 1: talk about things like social security. There are problems with
Speaker 1: the so called death file, the record of deceased individuals.
Speaker 1: They claim that people have been receiving benefits for years
Speaker 1: after they've actually been deceased. So there are issues like
Speaker 1: that which you may get given a report put on
Speaker 1: your desk as someone in governance off a government department,
Speaker 1: and you get one view off it, but the reality
Speaker 1: is different. So that's the argument for the deep reach
Speaker 1: they need to have into these government departments. What was
Speaker 1: your sense when you were sharing to fatu Aura? Could
Speaker 1: you actually trust the information? Did you have faith in
Speaker 1: the information that was being presented to you that you
Speaker 1: had to make major, potentially hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: type decisions based on that?
Speaker 4: It was not trustworthy. People were trustworthy, the people were honest,
Speaker 4: but they were working within systems that couldn't be relied
Speaker 4: upon to be accurate or compatible with one another. Absolutely
Speaker 4: a problem, and you know, I think it's no wonder
Speaker 4: you know that there are inefficiencies, I'm sure, and I
Speaker 4: don't know about the US system, but Elon Musk has
Speaker 4: probably benefited from more of the inefficiencies than anyone else
Speaker 4: in history, so he would know. But here there are undoubtedly,
Speaker 4: you know, individually small but possibly collective inaccuracies and wrong
Speaker 4: payments and wrong allocations going on all the time. And
Speaker 4: it isn't everyone's interests that we improve those and improve
Speaker 4: them quickly. And the better that's, the quicker that's done,
Speaker 4: the better, So, you know, I think it almost Peter,
Speaker 4: I know you sort of wanted to hang this discussion
Speaker 4: around Doge, but actually the discussion is much better if
Speaker 4: you ignore Doze in my view, and look at what
Speaker 4: we really need here and and what our problems are
Speaker 4: and the solutions that are available.
Speaker 1: Well, just one, you know, the immediate issues in front
Speaker 1: of our health system. One of them is you know,
Speaker 1: they're making a call at the moment about letting go
Speaker 1: essentially a large part of the health IT workforce, from
Speaker 1: you know to fatu Aura. Interesting your views on that
Speaker 1: rib at a time where it seems that digital health
Speaker 1: and preventative healthcare and all the digital tools that are
Speaker 1: available now around the world to provide those sorts of services.
Speaker 1: I mean, does this make sense to you that we
Speaker 1: need to sort of sort of burn it all down
Speaker 1: and rebuild it, or are you really worried about the
Speaker 1: loss of capability that's going to come with us.
Speaker 4: Well, a couple of things there. One is you've got
Speaker 4: to be very careful in politicians and public service executives
Speaker 4: talk about the job cuts they're making. Typically most of
Speaker 4: those jobs that no one's in. They like to announce
Speaker 4: that they're making job cuts, but often their vacant positions
Speaker 4: that they're cutting, So you've got to watch the numbers.
Speaker 4: There was scope for rationalization in the way the Ministry
Speaker 4: of Health and the individual health boards had built up
Speaker 4: their digital teams. It wasn't well structured or well organized,
Speaker 4: so there was scope for rationalization. And that I'm just
Speaker 4: not close enough to know whether the decisions being made
Speaker 4: now are the right ones in that but you know,
Speaker 4: this is not a matter of having the most people.
Speaker 4: It's a matter of having the right systems and well
Speaker 4: directed thinking going on about it. So yeah, I'm just
Speaker 4: too far away to know now. But there was certainly
Speaker 4: scope for rationalization.
Speaker 5: And you could see in the US the law of
Speaker 5: unindenda consequences that are about to flow through, right, and
Speaker 5: the people who are indulge and let's be honesty and
Speaker 5: I think may still be the richest man alife, but
Speaker 5: Tesla's shoes are forward, aren't aren't going to be hurt, right,
Speaker 5: But the funding cuts, the decision that they're making are
Speaker 5: going to flow through and start affecting everyday people's lives,
Speaker 5: whether it's their benefits, whether it's their health, whether it's
Speaker 5: their education, those sorts of things, and you know, even
Speaker 5: inside of you know, the New yealing house system. If
Speaker 5: we if we do get to a position where we
Speaker 5: take an idealistic we need to cut x amount of
Speaker 5: people from the its stuff, it'll be the patience that
Speaker 5: suffer because while while those people it's very hard to
Speaker 5: connect what they're doing, I can guarantee you because we
Speaker 5: saw it in Locatto when there was a big hack, stuff,
Speaker 5: bad stuff will happen. You're no one in that organization
Speaker 5: is setting out to do a bad job. They're actually
Speaker 5: doing things. And if we dis arbitrarily cut it, and
Speaker 5: I've worked in an organization that used to do this,
Speaker 5: we're going to go, hey, we're just going to take
Speaker 5: fifteen percent of our workforce out this year, bad stuff happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one hundred percent. My attitude, my argument would be
Speaker 4: that there was a need to rationalize duplication and confusion,
Speaker 4: and the projects that were being worked on, not that
Speaker 4: the certain I don't have no idea whether the numbers
Speaker 4: were right or on. What I would absolutely guarantee is,
Speaker 4: from what I know of the senior executives and directors
Speaker 4: and commissioners within that organization at the moment, the chances
Speaker 4: that they are making the right decisions about what it
Speaker 4: projects to proceed with them which not are very low.
Speaker 4: It's almost sitting there making the wrong decisions.
Speaker 3: Well and this and this again goes back to that
Speaker 3: question of transparency, right, So there are lots of if
Speaker 3: you could see the source code, if you could see
Speaker 3: the architecture, if the actual applications were in GET in
Speaker 3: a GET repository where people could download them and contribute
Speaker 3: to them, I just I just feel that there'd be
Speaker 3: more collective intelligence about some of the decisions being made.
Speaker 3: But we have this sort of hierarchical, very centralized decision
Speaker 3: making apparatus which is being shown up to basically not
Speaker 3: really big sets for purpose in you know, in what
Speaker 3: really in the next you know, two to three years,
Speaker 3: we're going to see AI just deployed throughout our entire
Speaker 3: economy and potentially drive you know, complete automation of pretty
Speaker 3: much all cognitive work. Anything that is done in front
Speaker 3: of a computer screen will be you know, arguably some
Speaker 3: of the stuff that I'm seeing will be the doable
Speaker 3: by an AI agent within one or two years. And
Speaker 3: so how are we preparing to take advantage of that change?
Speaker 3: And then also where's the conversation nationally as a different topic,
Speaker 3: but about what happens when people are disestablished from their
Speaker 3: roles by AI technology. So, you know, how are we
Speaker 3: going to work towards some kind of fair transition to
Speaker 3: a post AI labor market?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you go into in your book, you know,
Speaker 1: the concept that has been discussed about a universal basic
Speaker 1: income and things like that, which is happening that discussion
Speaker 1: and trials off it in places like Scandinavia. But on
Speaker 1: that transparency issue, Paul, as you've mentioned, you think, you know,
Speaker 1: blockchain is very amenable to that goal. We haven't really
Speaker 1: seen any experimentation in government. We've got Treasury, Reserve Bank
Speaker 1: rather looking at the concept of a central bank digital currency.
Speaker 1: They've put quite a long time frame on that. Nothing
Speaker 1: as much is going to happen, And is there anything
Speaker 1: obvious to you where this sort of technology with things
Speaker 1: like smart contracts, you know, that automation of the handshaking
Speaker 1: between government departments that can sometimes take a long time
Speaker 1: and be very bureaucratic. Any obvious areas that you could
Speaker 1: apply that sort of technology to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Look, I think for me, the standout candidate is
Speaker 5: how we manage identities and people's identities with it across
Speaker 5: all the government departments. I think blockchain technologies lend itself
Speaker 5: very well to that sort of stuff, and just protecting
Speaker 5: people's most private information. I think that is going to
Speaker 5: be increasingly important given the future that BENC is coming
Speaker 5: with AIS, because you know, if you think hackers are bad,
Speaker 5: now imagine them under seeing the power Amazon to do
Speaker 5: what they're doing. It'll be horrific, and frankly, the security
Speaker 5: companies aren't built to deal with that. So I think
Speaker 5: identity is certainly first and foremost for me, but also
Speaker 5: things like, you know, even just how we run our democracy,
Speaker 5: information and voting. There are already several governments out there
Speaker 5: not South Korea is one of them who are voting
Speaker 5: using blockchain technology help to feed up accounts, but also
Speaker 5: gets through the photo fraud which was a big topic.
Speaker 3: In America again. So there are there are really.
Speaker 5: Simple, you know, from our point of view, simple technologies
Speaker 5: that can be extended into that space. And you know,
Speaker 5: with the consumer data right and all of that stuff
Speaker 5: rolling through, like we think there's we need to have
Speaker 5: something that's not fit for yesterday, which is kind of
Speaker 5: possibly where we're going to end up. We need something
Speaker 5: that's going to be fit for this world where you've
Speaker 5: got ali agents doing what it's doing. And I think
Speaker 5: that touches on your point, Rob, But the people making
Speaker 5: the decisions probably looking backwards, not forwards, because it's hard
Speaker 5: to keep up.
Speaker 4: There is one point of view, Paul. Just to follow
Speaker 4: on from that thought, you know, it's easy to get
Speaker 4: depressed about that just when you think about the chances
Speaker 4: or how you would get this sort of decision making
Speaker 4: made properly from the center the other viewers that it
Speaker 4: won't be Let's forget about it. Let's accept that in fact,
Speaker 4: this is going to bubble up from what people do
Speaker 4: at a more micro level in individual companies and businesses
Speaker 4: and bits of operation, and eventually the people at the
Speaker 4: top will be dragged along to understanding it. And may well,
Speaker 4: I think that's happening in health. In health technology, it's
Speaker 4: been much more widely applied out in community and private
Speaker 4: enterprise health organizations. I see it happening a little bit
Speaker 4: in fintech as well, and I think perhaps it will
Speaker 4: bubble up from outside rather than be taken as a
Speaker 4: kind of a digital program. The moment you get these
Speaker 4: big government agencies sometimes seems to squash things rather than
Speaker 4: promoting them.
Speaker 3: I was really inspired by the work that ald retained
Speaker 3: it in Taiwan when she was a government Digital Minister,
Speaker 3: and that does zero interitative that she led there, which
Speaker 3: was really allowing all citizens to basically contribute to governments.
Speaker 3: To government I to open, complete transparency on the source code.
Speaker 3: And to the point about voting systems, you know, we
Speaker 3: have a system where you put a thick on a
Speaker 3: piece of paper once every three years to elect are
Speaker 3: representative and so much more. They were invented. They deployed
Speaker 3: a system based on pollus which drives towards consensus rather
Speaker 3: than adversarial politics. And so it was really interesting almost
Speaker 3: the gamification of political decision making through crowd sourcing and
Speaker 3: much more wide participation. So again, all of these are
Speaker 3: just innovations that are are available to be used and
Speaker 3: can be deployed. We have, but because of the funding
Speaker 3: structures that none of it, none of it happens at all.
Speaker 1: I just want to wrap up with, ideally, hopefully an
Speaker 1: idea from each of you about what we could do
Speaker 1: now given that we you know, we're very fiscally constrained
Speaker 1: at the moment. We have a government with a growth mindset.
Speaker 1: They say they're very sort of tech friendly, but the
Speaker 1: bottom line is everything. Ben, for instance, you have suggested
Speaker 1: we need some sort of agency or group within government
Speaker 1: that takes a view across government on technology investment. If
Speaker 1: we don't have that, we're going to continue to have
Speaker 1: the siloed approach to investing in the infrastructure that could
Speaker 1: underpin a lot of the stuff that will ultimately make
Speaker 1: government more efficient and equitable.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And whether that's a centralized government department in the
Speaker 3: traditional mold, I would push back on. I think working
Speaker 3: towards more decentralized collaborative initiatives just to make progress, I
Speaker 3: think would probably be a better idea than establishing yet
Speaker 3: another department in the bureaucracy. I think to basically pull
Speaker 3: it apart and enable and that will involve funding some
Speaker 3: kind of decentralized innovation model that gets applied and addresses
Speaker 3: the concerns around risk and so create maybe an innovation
Speaker 3: sandbox opportunity. But you know as soon as you create
Speaker 3: a slope that people will walk downhill. And so to
Speaker 3: basically create an environment where innovation that gets deployed into
Speaker 3: government services is there's a really clear pass for that.
Speaker 3: I think a decentralized model is probably the better way
Speaker 3: to do that.
Speaker 1: Paul, from your perspective, We've got an amazing community here
Speaker 1: of blockchain developers. I'm doing sort of gaming applications, fintech applications.
Speaker 1: What would you like to see sort of brought to
Speaker 1: bear on these problems facing government?
Speaker 5: So I've got kind of a two face response. So
Speaker 5: I think we should come up with a vision. So
Speaker 5: Singapore is a country without a lot of resources, and
Speaker 5: it's innovated into finance because that was a natural place
Speaker 5: to do it. And I think, you know our days
Speaker 5: are relying on commodity driven economy is probably done. So
Speaker 5: I think if we can lean into a vision as
Speaker 5: a government that says we want to be tech vest
Speaker 5: and truly mean it, not just the talking, but truly
Speaker 5: mean it. And then you know, I think Rob's point.
Speaker 5: You know, there's a whole bunch of very clever, smart,
Speaker 5: nimble stetups in New Zealand, and I think if we
Speaker 5: can get Central to buy into supporting those businesses adopting
Speaker 5: their technology for the greater good as well as supporting
Speaker 5: them to export, I think that would be a really
Speaker 5: good outcome climper nation as well as our central government services.
Speaker 1: And last word for you, Rob, what would you really
Speaker 1: like to see and what do you think we could achieve?
Speaker 1: Having been through the inferno of working at in the
Speaker 1: health sector and seeing firsthand after coming from sky City
Speaker 1: and the likes you know that have a very much
Speaker 1: a profit incentive to be efficient and to automate as
Speaker 1: much as possible and that sort of thing. What would
Speaker 1: you like to see and what do you think could
Speaker 1: be achievable in terms of tackling you know that the
Speaker 1: waste and the inefficiency in health and other government departments.
Speaker 4: I think the key here is innovation, and I think
Speaker 4: at the moment in New Zealand we think about innovation
Speaker 4: in the wrong way. We think about it at kind
Speaker 4: of the institutional and in vesta level, or perhaps at
Speaker 4: the private equity level. What change needs is to have
Speaker 4: the government being able to think much more in a
Speaker 4: venture capital mode about how it gets things moving, how
Speaker 4: it encourages good ideas that are coming up and gets
Speaker 4: them impluented at a smaller level. They don't have to
Speaker 4: find these big macro solutions to things. The solutions probably
Speaker 4: are very disaggregated, so you might as well approach them
Speaker 4: in that way. So that really comes back around, I
Speaker 4: think to what Ben and Paul have both been saying.
Speaker 4: We just need I don't want to set up another
Speaker 4: agency either, but we just need to create the scope
Speaker 4: where our focus is on encouraging innovation, which is of
Speaker 4: its nature usually pretty small when it starts, and you
Speaker 4: have to be prepared to take risks with that. The
Speaker 4: idea that the big money coming in from offshore is
Speaker 4: going to do this then or the next thing, I
Speaker 4: think it's a complete cul de sac. It's going to
Speaker 4: take us nowhere. So that's the key thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, lots of great ideas there, and the Doge machine
Speaker 1: will roll on in the US and we'll keep an
Speaker 1: eye on that, and we'll keep an eye on what's
Speaker 1: going on in government. But thanks so much, for all
Speaker 1: those great ideas. We'll put show notes up on the
Speaker 1: website linking to Ben's book and Paul's work with the
Speaker 1: hackathon and everything else. So thanks so much guys for
Speaker 1: coming on the Business of Tech.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you Peter.
Speaker 4: Thanks starving us.
Speaker 1: So there you have some really great ideas there really
Speaker 1: about the potential role of decentralized technology and collaboration. But also,
Speaker 1: as Rob said, it's about people as well, and it's
Speaker 1: about strategy, having a firm plan of what you actually
Speaker 1: want to achieve, rather than just taking the hatchet to
Speaker 1: government spending for ideological reasons. So hopefully it's something that
Speaker 1: the government here will increasingly do do this in an
Speaker 1: evidence based way. We've got Judith Collins as the Minister
Speaker 1: for digitizing government. She wants more efficiency, she wants better
Speaker 1: customer service in government. There are ways to do that
Speaker 1: leveraging really good technology. So hopefully she's got some good
Speaker 1: ideas out of this as well. But let me know
Speaker 1: what you think in the comments on my LinkedIn post.
Speaker 1: Show notes are also in the podcast section at Business
Speaker 1: deesk dot co dot nz. Lots of links related to
Speaker 1: this week's episode. Now you can stream the podcast on
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio or your favorite podcast app. Get in touch with
Speaker 1: your ideas for upcoming topics and guests. Just email me.
Speaker 1: I'm Peter at Peter Griffin dot co dot nz or
Speaker 1: I'm really easy to find on LinkedIn and I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Next week, I talk to Carmen
Speaker 1: Visselik under a Velocity Global about growing tech trade with India.
Speaker 1: Kamen is doing significant business with banks in India and
Speaker 1: was under Prime Minister's recent trade delegation to India. She
Speaker 1: has some sage advice for tech and digital companies trying
Speaker 1: to tap into the vast Indian market that's dropping next Thursday.
Speaker 1: Till then, have a great week.