ICT Skills and Capability in New Zealand: What's the Vision for the Future?
Originally Aired: Wednesday 10th September 2008
NZCS and WIT were proud to host the ICT issues panel debate addressing the vision for the future for ICT Skills and Capability in New Zealand on 10th of September 2008.
Unfortunately panellist and ICT Minister Hon David Cunliffe withdrew at the last minute, however we still had a host of high quality speakers discussing and debating the issues.
With Rob O'Neill, Editor of Computerworld as Chair, National ICT Spokesperson Hon Maurice Williamson, John Mazenier, Country Manager for Sun Microsystems, and Prof John Hine, Head of School and Professor of Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington discussed and debated issue of ICT Skills and Capability. They were joined by Gordon Grimsey and Margot Phillipps, the primary authors of the NZCS report on NCEA Achievement Standards.
There's been a lot of talk about Broadband lately, and for good reason. However "Connection" isn't the only barrier to digital access, and improving broadband is only part of the equation of breaking ICT free to truly bring about the economic transformation of New Zealand.
The panel put broadband to the side and discussed, debated, questioned and critiqued the current and future vision on ICT Skills, Capability and Education in New Zealand within the context of the profession, the community, the business sector and the education sector, and what it all actually means for our country.
How important is it to NZ to have a world-class and globally recognised ICT profession? How important is digital literacy to New Zealand's future? Can access to technology really live up to the promise and deliver both economic development and transformation? Whose role is it to better educate New Zealanders in Computing? Why aren't there more women and ethnic minorities in ICT? What's going on with computing in schools?
This was a thoroughly entertaining and stimulating discussion and debate.
Brought to you in association with KPMG
