IfG.CC - The Institute for eGovernment

The cost of the two 801 servers, with a total 1.5 terabytes of disk storage, is estimated to be $1 million. But unit operations manager Kent Duston said because of the way Government procurement was funded, the important figure was the impact on a department's operational budget.

Figures reveal the Govt.nz portal attracted 3.7 million unique visitors last year, a 35 per cent increase on 2006 with around 60 per cent of visitors coming from offshore.

Opened in December of 2002, the Wellington centre, in conjunction with Microsoft partners such as HP, develops proof-of-concept solutions that address business issues within local and central government agencies.

Democratic rights and obligations could be imperilled when Trusted Computing technologies and digital rights management arrive on new systems, says the manager of the State Service Commission’s e-government strategy and policy team, Hugh McPhail.

“The government portal was built to let people quickly and easily get to the right place on government websites to find a huge range of government services and New Zealand information. It is clearly delivering what people are looking for,” Trevor Mallard said.

“This is a great birthday present – the award was won exactly one year on from the portal’s launch,” State Services Minister Trevor Mallard.

Currently domain name registration company Domainz has the sole right to register names in the .govt.nz space. It is a moderated namespace, which means before a name is granted it must be approved by the commission, with input in some circumstances from the Association of Local Government Information Managers.

Late last year the e-government unit issued a warning to government agencies not to enable the Information Rights Management capability in Microsoft Server 2003 and Office 2003. The issue is still unresolved, says the unit's chief, Laurence Millar.

Government CIO Laurence Millar sees value in the recent review of Australian government ICT by Sir Peter Gershon. There are findings there that, he says, “resonate with my view of the challenges and opportunities in New Zealand”.

The Gershon review, published in August, resulted from wide-ranging submissions and will be used to assist the government in future decision-making.

Government IT specialists have roundly rubbished a claim that the state sector accounts for only 11% of New Zealand’s IT market.

Useful new standards are arousing a good deal of interest among government departments in speech applications, according to a software company specialising in the imaging and speech markets.

The undertaking is one of several new targets announced today with the launch of the government's updated digital blueprint, Digital Strategy 2.0.

The proposed uniform authentication scheme for online use of government services is already threatening to slide away from the privacy commitments made for it at the scheme’s inception.

The State Services Commission is writing off the $2 million cost of developing and piloting the system which would have cost $7.5 million to implement.

The department has begun shopping for an online authentication system to let people access government services over the net using a single password and log on, issuing a request for information (RFI) to potential technology providers.