GOVIS Events - 2018
Lunchtime Forum - 27 November 2018 - How to Make Your ICT Project Fail
ICT projects fail all the time. They take too long, cost too much, and deliver solutions that don't work or are too hard to use.
Failure is not always a bad thing. If we never fail, we never learn. What is bad is that we don't talk about our failures. We don't tell people what went wrong. We don't help others to learn from our mistakes. Often, we only hear about failed ICT projects when things go really bad - when Chief Executives and Ministers are being asked awkward questions on national television. Few organisations are prepared to talk honestly in public about how they stuffed up.
This forum tried to address that problem. It was quite different from our usual GOVIS events. There wasn't a speaker talking about project management. Instead, we ran a smaller, more interactive session that aimed to get people talking openly and safely about the bad stuff that goes on in IT projects. It was facilitated by hackathon king Mike Riversdale.
Lunchtime Forum - 14 November 2018 - A Chat with Vinton Cerf
This forum was an opportunity for an informal chat with one of the 'Fathers of the Internet'.
Vinton Cerf is Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. He contributes to global policy development and continued spread of the Internet. In his early career, he worked for the the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency and was the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. He has served in executive positions at MCI, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, and on the faculty of Stanford University. His personal interests include fine wine, gourmet cooking and science fiction.
The forum was chaired by Richard Foy from Archives NZ. We kicked off with him asking Vint some questions about his career and what's happening to the Internet. Then we threw it open for Q&A with the audience, via sli.do.
Lunchtime Forum - 17 August 2018 - Artificial Intelligence
All around the world, businesses and governments are deploying Artificial Intelligence. They are using AI to analyse and solve complex problems, to improve productivity, and to provide better and more personalised customer experiences. This forum looked at how agencies in NZ government are using automation, machine learning, and other AI technologies. We had presentations from:
- Dale Elvy from Stats NZ, who is leading the government’s algorithm review
- Ross Young from Google, who is an executive board member at the AI Forum
- Ploi Yibmantasiri from Harmonic, who has real life experience of implementing machine learning in the energy sector
- Pim Willemstein from MBIE, who will talk about their work on a cross agency digital concierge
- James Blair from the automation team at Inland Revenue
Lunchtime forum - 21 May 2018 - GOVIS Conference Taster
This event was held ahead of the GOVIS Conference on 21-22 June 2018. The theme for the year was ‘Digital Evolution’. At this forum we asked some of our conference speakers to give us a preview of their conference presentation. The twist? Each one had maximum of five minutes to talk. We asked them to be thought-provoking, inspiring, and/or challenging.
Lunchtime forum - 21 March 2018 - Enterprise Content Management as a Service – Delivering Benefits
This was a joint forum between GOVIS and RIMPA.
The all-of-government panel for ECMaaS Common Capability was launched in 2013, with three service providers – Intergen, OpenText and Team Asparona. Each vendor provides a different technology solution, but they are all intended to help agencies to improve the way they create, store, collaborate, protect and manage a wide range of digital content and information.
What are the ECMaaS Common Capabilities? Are they delivering the benefits expected? What has worked? What has not worked? At this session we heard from colleagues who have done the hard yards implementing and running these systems, and learn from their experience. At this forum we heard from:
Claire Mistry – Civil Aviation Authority
Judit Farquhar-Nadasi – Department of Conservation
Anita Easton – Ministry for Primary Industries
Miranda Welch - GCDO
Networking Event - 7 March 2018 - Lean Beer with Owen McCall
With the first two months of 2018 out of the way, we ran a GOVIS networking event with a bit of a twist!
Owen McCall has presented at GOVIS for the last two years and shared with us his thoughts and experience about what we can learn from games and game designers around how to engage our teams and improve organisational performance as well as how to be the disruptor not the disrupted.
Owen was the CIO of the Warehouse from 2003 to 2011 and transformed the Warehouse's ICT delivery to be customer and business focused, so that it became a strategic enabler of business strategy and outcomes. By focusing on value, Owen was able to lead and communicate change to his executive, his business leaders, and his staff.
Owen facilitated a Lean Beer discussion (using a Lean Coffee approach).
Owen is a lively and engaging faciliator - whether it's value led innovation, or the next big tech thing to hit government he’ll have a view so this was a time for burning questions and debate!