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IR and Application Service Provision

 

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Follow up and Question (Ros Coote, State Services Commission):

Five to six years ago we noticed a gap and an opportunity around the fact that collaboration software was coming on the market. We were concerned at the time that multiple agencies would buy this collaboration software and learn how to run it and this investment would be repeated 39 times plus, so we asked for funding to run a three-year pilot … so we’ve been running application service for 21/2 years. We service all parts of government, the CRIs, local government, groups who are doing collaboration and want to use that kind of software, but don’t have the wherewithall inhouse to either run it on a fulltime basis or they just want to try it before they buy it, so I want to ask Steve [Knight] if he could put in his budget for it.

I’m not sure about the willingness of other institutes to use an application service provision structure, because there’s no point in putting in a budget bid if everyone’s going to go round and buy it individually anyway, maybe not this year but further down the track, but it is quite an efficient way to buy the software, get expertise in one place, so we can stop thinking about technology and start thinking about putting the information in. I would like some feedback from the big institutions here about using that funding in that way from central government to help us get on the road.

Response:

KB — If the demand is there for the bandwidth then that bandwidth is generally supplied. Looking back at the development of the ADT programme, Australian Digital Theses as it was then, they had a policy of chunking the theses up into their component bits with a rule of thumb of about 2–4 MB per chunk. That’s gradually disappearing in Australia, and people at home have broadband and think nothing of downloading streaming videos, audio or whatever it is in very large database files.

I notice in the hotel there’s a 100 MB pipe which is very fast and I think that shouldn’t hold you back.

The bandwidth will come, that’s the way of the world, so as a preliminary step you can think about chunking up into manageable sizes but it won’t be long before you don’t have to do that any more, that’s my prediction.

Question:

Come back to this, interesting that we’ve got people here from the academic library sector and also the National Library [of New Zealand] are involved, but we haven’t talked a great deal, and maybe it’s not appropriate, but we haven’t even touched on the concept of how any of this relates to the broader, wider New Zealand community. And one of the big issues is coming back to this table’s point of broadband or internet connection, which is (a) damn hard to set up for your average New Zealander and (b) damned expensive, and I think that something needs to be pushed there in order that access to this kind of research and high level information is made more available.

Response:

AS — Just a comment on that. One of the important sub communities you need to think about is the business sector, because the business sector will suddenly get access to all New Zealand research that previously it couldn’t get unless it actually walked into someone’s library, which they hardly ever do because they haven’t got the time to do it. And businesses usually have better bandwidth than homes, so it’s a sub target market you should look at.

Follow up (Steve Knight, National Library of New Zealand):

Most government departments are working with MORST quite closely with the advanced network. … Also have the government shared network coming through at public sector level. Work is going on with the speed of the activity.

Re Ros [Coote]’s question about whether or not agencies would be interested in some sort of application provision, when Julie [Stevens] first came to the National Library [of New Zealand] 5–6 weeks back, we had someone from Northland Polytech. When the notion of [a cost of] US$19,000 was raised, it was clear that the Northland Polytech would not be able to engage at that level. To me that was quite an eye opener because it did not seem like an enormous amount of money.

It is quite clear that there are a range of institutions some of which are already making moves to look at repositories at the higher end, but also a genuine possibility at the lower end to run something like … suggesting, we would need an indication before being able to structure a budget that is required by the communities involved. Whether or not some of the universities or CRIs or polytechs or libraries, we need the advisories from those communities that something … would actually be viable and useful to them.

Question (Keitha Booth, State Services Commission): Another comment from me, SSC E-Government programme.

We have created a new workstream relating to government information management strategies and policies and have some initial work under way but it would be good to have feedback from you on what priorities we should be setting in our work programme in terms of information management policies?

Follow up (John Rankin, Affinity Ltd): Is there one last comment?

Response:

[No response]