April 16, 2025 • 45 mins
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative has sparked global debate about balancing disruptive reform with sustainable public sector innovation.
In a panel discussion on this week's episode of The Business of Tech, former Te Whatu Ora chair Rob Campbell, futurist Ben Reid, and crypto expert Paul Quickenden critique Musk’s approach while proposing alternative strategies for New Zealand to drive efficiency in government while harnessing technologies like blockchain and AI.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This week on the Business of Tech powered by two
Degrees Business, we're talking DOGE, the Trump Administration's Department of
Government Efficiency. It's tearing through government agencies, laying off tens
of thousands of public servants, and dismantling entire departments such
as US AID. It's all in aid off a grand
plan to slash the US deficit, which sees America pay
(00:27):
iwatering amounts each year to service national debt. Here's how
Elol Musk, doge's chief architect, describes the mission to Fox News.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars,
so from a nominal deficit of two trillion to track
cut the deficit in half to one trillion, or looked
at it in toilet federal spanning, to drop the federal
spanning from seven trillion to sex trillion. We want to
reduce the spending by eliminating waste and fort reduce the
spanning by fifteen percent, which seems really quite achievable. The
(01:01):
government is not efficient and there's a lot of Western frauds,
so we feel confident that fifteen percent reduction can can
be done without affecting any of the critical government services.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Sounds great in theory, but critics argue that the efficiency
drive is really a thinly veiled attempt to weed out
the so called deep state that Trump believes trying to
derail his first presidency. They also claim all hurt US
citizens by radically reducing key functions like Social Security and
the National Institutes of Health. Even the Department of Education
(01:38):
is getting a massive cut. DOAGE claims it's amassed one
hundred and fifty billion US in savings already, thirty percent
of it from contract grant and lease cancellations. Musk tells
us that less than fifteen percent of the spending being
cut is out and out fraud. The next six to
(01:58):
twelve months will reveal the impact of DOGE on the
USA government and on the services that citizens enjoy, but
already governments around the world are considering their own cost
cutting drives. We got off to an early start even
before the Coalition government came into office, with labor trimming
public servant headcount. That's accelerated under the Coalition, which spending
(02:20):
cuts to programs across the board with a similar aim
to cut national debt. We've also got David Seymour's Ministry
of regulation tasked with identifying and cutting superfluous rules and regulations.
Let's be fair, doge is something else entirely with Elon
Musk's team of young geeks given unprecedented access to government records,
(02:43):
it's ripe for conflicts of interest as well, with musks
companies SpaceX and Tesla having received billions in contracts and
subsidies from the US government. But I think most people
have some sympathy for the idea of smaller government and
cutting red tape and using technology to gain more visibility
(03:03):
into government spending and procuring services in a smarter way.
So how could we do doge properly here in New Zealand. Well,
I assembled a super smart panel of people to try
and find out. Joining me this week are Rob Campbell,
Ben Reid, and Paul Quickendon.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Rob Campbell has been a board director and chair of
companies like SkyCity, Tourism Holdings and Somerset Group, as well
as sitting on the boards of government agencies like the
Environmental Protection Agency and tefatu Ura Health New Zealand, where
he was sacked as board chair in February twenty twenty three.
(03:42):
For a LinkedIn post, he wrote that criticized the National
Party's policy on the Three Waters reform. If anyone knows
where the inefficiencies in our largest government agencies are, it's
probably rob Ben Reid returns to the show the christ
Church Futurist and tech can sultant. He's given a lot
of thought to how technology can play a role in
(04:05):
creating a more efficient and fairer government in everything from
policymaking to electronic voting, and Paul quickened In rounds out
the panel. Paul's the chief commercial officer and head of
the New Zealand operation of Easy Crypto, the largest locally
owned crypto exchange, which last month was acquired by Australian
owned swift FX. Paul thinks a lot about how decentralized
(04:28):
technologies like the blockchain and smart contracts can be applied
to the big problems facing society. So, without further ado,
here's my chat with the Doge Panel this week on
the Business of Tech. Rob Ben Paul, welcome to the
(04:50):
Business of Tech. Thanks so much for coming on. You're
Jordder so like me, you've probably been watching with a
mix of horror, fascination and sort of amusement. What's been
going on in the US with DOGE, the Department of
Government Efficiency, the Elon Musk led efforts, and boy, it's
(05:11):
just amazing what's coming out every week some of the
things that he has done. Obviously big layoffs in some
government departments, some government departments effectively being dismantled, the likes
of us AID. You're seeing the United States Digital Services,
an agency that was run out of the White House
that's been basically absorbed into DOGE. You've got Elon Musks
(05:34):
essentially saying I need the source code of government to
do this properly. I need to get into every database,
look at every data feed to make sure that what
I'm being told about what is going on in government
is accurate. He's talking about magic money computers that exist
in the US government. A lot of people have said, well, duh, yeah,
that's what the Treasury and others do. They print and
(05:56):
manufacture money. But you've also got a vein I suspect
you agree as well. Of Look, this is actually a
useful thing to do to look at efficiency, waste, and
even fraud. And Musca said he thinks it's probably about
ten to twenty percent of its actual fraud that is
going on where they see they need to fix things.
(06:17):
The rest of it is inefficiency, and it's probably something
you can all relate to. We're all frustrated about how
slow moving and bureaucratic government can be and that is
leading to real problems in society, inequality, slow access to
for instance, healthcare. We've just in the last couple of
(06:38):
days we heard some horrific stories about people having to
wait for cardiograms and potentially that leading to fatal conditions.
So we know there is an efficiency, there are bottlenecks there,
but really Keen, first of all, we will stell it
with you, Rob, with your extensive experience both in business
and obviously as the chair of Ta Fatuura for period
(07:00):
as well, overseeing huge government spending there and a big bureaucracy.
What do you make of dog and is there a
kernel of value on what they're attempting.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
There's a kernel of value in continuously reevaluating what you're
doing to ensure that you are doing it efficiently and effectively,
whether you're in private business or government, and governments are
notoriously not good at this, So there's value in that.
(07:31):
Whether letting a mad axe man into the front door
and having him roam around the government is a good
way of doing that. I'm much less convinced. I don't
think there's much to be said for the way they're
going about it. But that doesn't mean that there isn't
a need to have continual reevaluation of that kind going on.
(07:53):
But as has happened here much lesser levels. The key
to doing any of these exercises is to understand the mechanism,
the model that you're dealing with. Understand what is happening there,
not just deal with it, which with the metrics which
(08:15):
are coming out the far end, but understand what the
model is you're working with. And if you don't do that,
you can go and roam around. Accountants to it quite often,
and just as dangerously, you can go and roam around.
And so we want to cut this, we want to
cut that, we want to do this. But if you
don't understand to come back to it, don't understand the
model of what's going on here, then you're probably going
(08:36):
to cause as much damage as you'll do good. And
I suspect that with the way they're approaching it in
the US, that's highly likely to be the case.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, And that's a big criticism of DOGE so far
is that the team members, while a lot of them
are skilled computer programmers, some of the very young, gifted
people that have come out of Tesla and other companies
like that, they sort of lack any understanding of government processes, contracts,
how grants work, the actual realities of working in government.
So it's one thing to take a sort of a
(09:07):
tech focus on this, and they know how efficient tech
can be, but the actual workings of government is a
completely different thing. And without doing it in conjunction with
all those people who have that domain knowledge, I guess
you're going to run into trouble.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Yeah, and two steps there, Peter one, I agree with
the way you frame it that I would go even
further and say that it's not enough just to understand the
current machinery, because it's a fair bet the current machinery
is clumsy and wrong and obscuring things. You've got to
go back to that real model of what it is
we're trying to do here, How are we trying to
do it? Does that make sense? And the technology and
(09:44):
the accounting and everything else really follows on after that,
You know, you can send in some bright tech people.
There's not really any different descending and some bright accountants
to look at one of these things. If you really
don't understand what you're trying to achieve and have a
good model of what you try to achieve, the danger
is that you will just cause distruction, not creation.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
And what's your take on Doge? Obviously you've written a
book last year, Fast Forward Our Tailor, which is really
advocating for digital first government, things like legislating full service
application programming interfaces to make government a lot more efficient
and equitable. What's your take on what you've seen sort
(10:25):
of unfold in the US with Doge.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, like Rob says, sort of going in there with
a chainsaw is you know, we'll wait to see how
it all turns out. But I mean I've listened. I
think the US is a very different political environment to
hear and out there are and I think what I
had a very interesting podcast recently where the Gray Area Podcasts,
(10:50):
where the speaker was basically describing the underlying political access here.
Whereas you've got status quoests who seem to think that
everything's fine, versus brokennests who think that everything is broken,
and you have the extreme brokennest wing have now taken
hold of the leaves of power, and so really they
really didn't think it was worth fixing, if you if
(11:12):
you like, So, I think part of the strategy here
is to go in and just utterly dismantle what is there,
and it can't be any more broken than it was before. So,
you know, I think that, as I say, the US
context is very different to hear it in out you know,
the book. In my book, you know, it was really
(11:33):
thinking about how emerging technology can provide solutions to deliver
our rutcomes. And if we agree that productivity, accessibility, efficiency
are all outcomes of you know, horizon points we should
be aiming towards, then you know, employing some of these
modern technologies is arguably, you know, the way to achieve
(11:53):
that very quickly. Yeah, So look some of the ideas
that I you know, I like to reimagine the state
quote and I wouldn't say that Altibor's government is broken,
but I'd say it has a whole lot of inertia
inside it. You have a permanent public service constitutionally, which
(12:14):
leads to almost a culture of risk avoidance and and
you know, reluctance to rise significant change and if you
if you think about, you know, the modern services that
we're that we're consuming from, you know, the frontier technology
firms right now, then they are all software interfaces. And
(12:38):
so if you could re imagine the service delivery channels
of government as being software and application programming interface, and
increasingly that you could have an AI agent that would
interact with government services, then I think you could probably
take out aultimate a lot of the roles that are happening,
you know, in government right now, and and actually build
(13:00):
of a better service outcomes there. Finally, those better service
outcomes is the front front loading of the whole process
that they're certainly not doing in the in the US
right now.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Okay, and we'll come back to some of the suggestions
you have in Fast Forward al Tara around this that
may help. Paul. You're at easy Crypto at the moment,
you're really passionate and understand blockchain technologies, and you're actually
running a hackathon on this particular issue. Was this sort
(13:31):
of inspired by Doage seeing what was going on in
the US and thinking, actually, could we do this in
a sensible way and get some of our most innovative
technologists to contribute to it.
Speaker 5 (13:41):
So we wrote a series of provocations for the Hack
of Time some time ago, and at that time, the
rumors of what DOGE was going to be and what
it's turned out to be a very different and what
I mean by that, as DOGE was trying to drive
some efficiency, there was talk of what chains being embedded
in some US processes to streamline stuff and where you know,
(14:02):
I represent a sector that believes that blockchains do have
a role to play and some of that, and so
we write a series of provocations. But it's not just
about building government departments on blockchains and eliminating and that's
not that's not what the Hack of pons about. It
was just really trying to get people to think about
some real world use cases and those solutions that would
have meaningful value. And given you know, we all touch government,
(14:24):
central or local government in some way, shape and form, like,
it's an easy thing for us to all from the
outside look in and go maybe we could do this
a little bit better. And you know, I think as
citizens were allowed to question our services are delivered to us,
and I think that's part of a good robust democracy.
(14:45):
But we are not advocating for what's you know, the
ideologically driven stuff that's coming out of DOGE. Now, that's
that's not where we started. And you know, again like
the one that I think you know, we were faring
to around, could you run in an expense system a
government expenses a blockchain. That was just one of maybe
twenty five provocations to the teams. So you know, we're
(15:06):
just trying to get people who's great mat of stimulated
when we wrote this sometime again.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah, that's great, and I'm sure that's something actually the
likes of Judith Collins, the Minister for Digitizing Government, is
actually going to welcome, you know, sort of innovation in
this space. But Rob, you know, you're the one who's
had the most experience actually on the inside of working
with big government departments. I think at one point you
said New Zealand health system you described as a blocked
(15:32):
digestive system, which is a nice metaphor for it. But
can you sort of elaborate on that in a big
department like that? And health is a sort of I
guess is a special case and they are working to
try and fix it. But where are the sorts of
places that you really see the inefficiency and the wastage
that just really starts to result in a degradation of
(15:55):
service for citizens.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Well, I think I think health was and still is
a particularly ramshackle. It doesn't really even deserve to be
called a system. It's a kind of a ramshackle assembly
of different systems. And if you take, for example, the
recent stuff about t FUTU or are trying to run
the finances on a spreadsheet, Well, actually what they were
trying to do was take a whole lot of systems
(16:19):
that were producing different financial information and had to assemble
it somehow had never been assembled before, and the obvious
way to assemble it was on a spreadsheet. It wasn't
that anyone had started out wanting to manage it that way,
to be fair to the people currently running that. But
the reimagining thing, it sounds a bit of a grand phrase,
but there is enormous scope to improve these systems. I'm
(16:45):
working with a small fintech setup at the moment that
has some ideas about payments and accountability and audits and
all those kind of things that could improve distribution of benefits,
for example, And there are any of these ideas around
and what there was what there needs to be is
an openness to consider, apply and experiment with those within
(17:08):
the public service, which there isn't. So what you had
in health was a whole lot of ideas that had
been thrown at what was when Tavardaora was formed, the
largest software development house in New Zealand, accumulating people who
were defending often incompatible projects that were working against one another,
(17:33):
and simply because no one had really stood back and
properly thought about what are we trying to achieve here,
what are the priorities, what are the available technologies. So
they were basically trying to assess various offers that were
being made to them by various other providers and then
rebuild them in some way. So it was no wonder.
(17:55):
It was a mess, and I think that's not uncommon.
So some of that culture has to change, but I
don't really think that's all that difficult. I mean, New
Zealand does have a pretty active ecosystem of people coming
up with quite practical ideas which are not moonshots by
any stretch of the imagination, but are immediately applicable, which
(18:16):
could be picked up by government departments. And there is
a degree of sclerosis within those government departments, as there
is within within a number of larger private companies too.
I think the cause of that is a lack of
understanding both of the models of what is being done,
(18:38):
but also of the technologies at politician level, at board
member level, and at senior executive level. There are a
lot of people within the public service that understand, are
open to and would welcome innovation, but it is really
being stopped by a lack of understanding from the type.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
In my view, I totally agree with that, and I
think what I'd also add is structurally the way that
the bureaucracy is structured into these monolithics, siloed departments where
actually a technology student will be architected with common components
across all of these and they're you know, there were
you know, there is a g CDO trying to coordinate
(19:17):
across all of them. But actually, you know, services like identity,
like payments would be common across the whole government platform,
and yet every individual department still operates their own to
some degree. And so, you know, I think there's this
fundamentally re architecting the bureaucracy is going to be a
consequence of attempting to digitize the whole government, and these
(19:42):
these departments are not in the mood for that right.
They operate with a with a large degree of inerture.
As I said, So, one of the considerations I would
say is why do we have permanent government departments, government agencies?
Why do we not just the same way as we
have an election every three years, Why don't we just
put us sinessa limit that you know, a government department
will live for five years and then it will be
(20:04):
recycled and shut down. And so you know, why could
you not actually derive some of this permanent refreshment of
your bureaucracy into some legislation.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Yeah, and you know, one of the ideas in the book,
as I said at the start Digital First, government legislated
full Services API. No government service can be enabled without
API implementation. And for people who don't understand what that is,
this is a sort of a plug and essentially that
allows data to be transferred between systems in a seamless
(20:39):
sort of way. So, and that's something I hear a
lot across government. It is very siloed, and it's sort
of by design, partly for the reasons that I think
you've alluded to that they don't want to change, but
also citizens don't necessarily want to change. We don't even
want a digital driver's license in this country. There's a
lot of opposition to putting data all in one place,
(21:01):
even if there's a good case that it's going to
help people get more equitable access.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
So my take on all of this conversation is that
it's when you are in health and you're a nurse.
You're very clear what you're doing and the goals you
know is the patient right in front of you. But
as you start to get further away your loose side
of the outcomes you're trying to deliver. It happens in
big companies. I used to work for a tower communications company.
It happens there as well, and you can get fixated
(21:27):
on your little project and your little thing and have
no actual connection to the outcome you're trying to do
the thing. The observable thing for me is that across
all of the bureocracy that is government is there's no
single vision or platforms. And you know, you've talked you
know being and I agree with some of what you said.
I may have some challenges with some others parts of
what you said, but that's okay. You know, things about
(21:49):
identity and access management, how that's done, my personal information,
how that is shared or not shared. Payments because it's
still about moving money and did you money around. Those
sorts of things all should be a foundation blocks for
every government department that builds on it. But that's not
how it's been constructed. And it's because they were organically developed,
(22:12):
you know, as they were digitizing. They're probably digitized at
different times. You know, I can remember before the dhvs
became an amalgamated set, like they were just hospitals, So
you know, they all kind of grew and then you
have such huge technology debt that trying to bring it
together what you're talking about being which is the Amazon
(22:33):
way and API first, but you had a very charismatic,
single leader at the top who was able to enforce
that stuff and doing that through a public service, that's
a real challenge, and you know, you almost get to
a point in time where you have to say, we
have to start a new we have to start with
(22:53):
some foundational building blocks and starting new.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
I think you also have to have regard to the
way finance and spending ability is spread through the public service.
It really operates on what I've always seen is kind
of a jamjar theory where there's an appropriation of money
for a particular purpose, which is to find ahead of time,
and that's what's available for that purpose, and that goes
(23:16):
into that jam jar. And if you're managing a public
service operation, you have a whole set of these jam
jars which have been predetermined for you, and what you're
not doing is really ever sitting back and seeing where
the money would be most effectively spent, So you are
spending it out of each jar, and that does lead
to a kind of a very inefficient decision making system
(23:40):
as well. So my point is it's embedded in the
way they're financed, embedded in the way that they have
the ability to spend, which entrenches it so that actually
saving some money or doing something better in one part
of the operation doesn't necessarily make any progress for you.
Speaker 5 (23:58):
Again, that's where we'd think blockchain a role to play,
because if a blockchain system was there and every government
department could see that someone's building a brand new payment system,
you had some sort of edict that said, why don't
you reuse what we've got rather than build something new.
Those types of things is where you know, we think
blockchains are really powerful because they're quite transparent in that regard,
(24:19):
and they're also really good at managing the flow of
information because it's always there, you know. That's kind of
the other key element of blockchains. And so having a
system where what someone did in twenty twenty three is
available to the people in twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five,
so they can kind of see the evolution, I think
is also a powerful thing around blockchain. So that's why, Peter,
(24:42):
you know, we did have these publications written. So we
do think there are good uses for blockchain technology in
the public sector, but it's not a be all in
or we're not trying to take it all over.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
I mean, I would say that every government in the
West world, in the democratic world, is going to be
having the same conversation right now. The UK announced last
week kis that I think gives forty five billion pounds
of efficiencies of cost cutting from AI and digitization their initiative,
and so I think, you know, the Elon Musk led
(25:14):
Doge initiative in the US is driving this conversation of worldwide,
and I think that's an opportunity because if every government
is having the same challenges. Then let's coordinate, let's cooperate,
let's build open gov stack and I'm sure it just
exists so that you can basically just coordinate and take
the best bits from what everybody else is building all
(25:35):
around the world blockchain, but other open source components as well,
and that would be The other principle absolutely is that
unless there is a compelling reason why the software that
is deployed inside government needs to be closed source, then
as a principle, everything that is deployed needs to be
open source. That also mitigates against the enclosure of of
(26:00):
government services by large technology companies who have managed to
basically build significant footprint underneath government services that exists, and
that's going to be quite hard in future if we
don't change direction towards more open source, flexible software to
actually get to wean ourselves off.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, that's a big bone of contention with our local
tech companies. The likes of Ian McCrae from Orion Healthcare.
It felt like he was being his head against the
brick wall dealing with our health system because that big,
big tech procurement is so entrenched, the likes of Microsoft's
and AWS. We have a cloud first strategy and government,
and they are the default providers to offer that.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
The political climate has changed, right, so they are effectively
beholden to a very unpredictable, unstable government which will potentially
could add tariffs reverse tariffs to the cost of those
and so it would be very at idea I think
to build some resilience and diversity in voice into where
(27:04):
we're procuring most of the platforms we're running our then
it systems on. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Absolutely, I think often government under official government officials often
underestimate the extent to which those very large mega vendors
are running their own business model quite effectively too. And
it may coincide with your needs it or it may not,
but it's not The aim is not that and so
(27:29):
the more we can take a open attitude towards that,
the better. And I think for a non technologist like me,
which I say straight away I am, the more you
get involved in the stuff, the more you learn how
much better protection there is in terms of accountability, auditability,
and transparency in open systems. So totally agree with that.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, Rob. One of the premise of DOGE is that
they need sort of access to the source code of government.
Is they don't trust the government officials. You know, they
talk about things like social security. There are problems with
the so called death file, the record of deceased individuals.
They claim that people have been receiving benefits for years
(28:12):
after they've actually been deceased. So there are issues like
that which you may get given a report put on
your desk as someone in governance off a government department,
and you get one view off it, but the reality
is different. So that's the argument for the deep reach
they need to have into these government departments. What was
(28:33):
your sense when you were sharing to fatu Aura? Could
you actually trust the information? Did you have faith in
the information that was being presented to you that you
had to make major, potentially hundreds of millions of dollars
type decisions based on that?
Speaker 4 (28:48):
It was not trustworthy. People were trustworthy, the people were honest,
but they were working within systems that couldn't be relied
upon to be accurate or compatible with one another. Absolutely
a problem, and you know, I think it's no wonder
you know that there are inefficiencies, I'm sure, and I
don't know about the US system, but Elon Musk has
(29:10):
probably benefited from more of the inefficiencies than anyone else
in history, so he would know. But here there are undoubtedly,
you know, individually small but possibly collective inaccuracies and wrong
payments and wrong allocations going on all the time. And
it isn't everyone's interests that we improve those and improve
(29:32):
them quickly. And the better that's, the quicker that's done,
the better, So, you know, I think it almost Peter,
I know you sort of wanted to hang this discussion
around Doge, but actually the discussion is much better if
you ignore Doze in my view, and look at what
we really need here and and what our problems are
(29:52):
and the solutions that are available.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Well, just one, you know, the immediate issues in front
of our health system. One of them is you know,
they're making a call at the moment about letting go
essentially a large part of the health IT workforce, from
you know to fatu Aura. Interesting your views on that
rib at a time where it seems that digital health
(30:15):
and preventative healthcare and all the digital tools that are
available now around the world to provide those sorts of services.
I mean, does this make sense to you that we
need to sort of sort of burn it all down
and rebuild it, or are you really worried about the
loss of capability that's going to come with us.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Well, a couple of things there. One is you've got
to be very careful in politicians and public service executives
talk about the job cuts they're making. Typically most of
those jobs that no one's in. They like to announce
that they're making job cuts, but often their vacant positions
that they're cutting, So you've got to watch the numbers.
(30:55):
There was scope for rationalization in the way the Ministry
of Health and the individual health boards had built up
their digital teams. It wasn't well structured or well organized,
so there was scope for rationalization. And that I'm just
not close enough to know whether the decisions being made
now are the right ones in that but you know,
this is not a matter of having the most people.
(31:17):
It's a matter of having the right systems and well
directed thinking going on about it. So yeah, I'm just
too far away to know now. But there was certainly
scope for rationalization.
Speaker 5 (31:28):
And you could see in the US the law of
unindenda consequences that are about to flow through, right, and
the people who are indulge and let's be honesty and
I think may still be the richest man alife, but
Tesla's shoes are forward, aren't aren't going to be hurt, right,
But the funding cuts, the decision that they're making are
going to flow through and start affecting everyday people's lives,
(31:51):
whether it's their benefits, whether it's their health, whether it's
their education, those sorts of things, and you know, even
inside of you know, the New yealing house system. If
we if we do get to a position where we
take an idealistic we need to cut x amount of
people from the its stuff, it'll be the patience that
suffer because while while those people it's very hard to
(32:14):
connect what they're doing, I can guarantee you because we
saw it in Locatto when there was a big hack, stuff,
bad stuff will happen. You're no one in that organization
is setting out to do a bad job. They're actually
doing things. And if we dis arbitrarily cut it, and
I've worked in an organization that used to do this,
we're going to go, hey, we're just going to take
fifteen percent of our workforce out this year, bad stuff happens.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
Yeah, one hundred percent. My attitude, my argument would be
that there was a need to rationalize duplication and confusion,
and the projects that were being worked on, not that
the certain I don't have no idea whether the numbers
were right or on. What I would absolutely guarantee is,
from what I know of the senior executives and directors
and commissioners within that organization at the moment, the chances
(32:59):
that they are making the right decisions about what it
projects to proceed with them which not are very low.
It's almost sitting there making the wrong decisions.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Well and this and this again goes back to that
question of transparency, right, So there are lots of if
you could see the source code, if you could see
the architecture, if the actual applications were in GET in
a GET repository where people could download them and contribute
to them, I just I just feel that there'd be
more collective intelligence about some of the decisions being made.
(33:29):
But we have this sort of hierarchical, very centralized decision
making apparatus which is being shown up to basically not
really big sets for purpose in you know, in what
really in the next you know, two to three years,
we're going to see AI just deployed throughout our entire
economy and potentially drive you know, complete automation of pretty
(33:51):
much all cognitive work. Anything that is done in front
of a computer screen will be you know, arguably some
of the stuff that I'm seeing will be the doable
by an AI agent within one or two years. And
so how are we preparing to take advantage of that change?
And then also where's the conversation nationally as a different topic,
(34:12):
but about what happens when people are disestablished from their
roles by AI technology. So, you know, how are we
going to work towards some kind of fair transition to
a post AI labor market?
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, and you go into in your book, you know,
the concept that has been discussed about a universal basic
income and things like that, which is happening that discussion
and trials off it in places like Scandinavia. But on
that transparency issue, Paul, as you've mentioned, you think, you know,
blockchain is very amenable to that goal. We haven't really
(34:46):
seen any experimentation in government. We've got Treasury, Reserve Bank
rather looking at the concept of a central bank digital currency.
They've put quite a long time frame on that. Nothing
as much is going to happen, And is there anything
obvious to you where this sort of technology with things
like smart contracts, you know, that automation of the handshaking
(35:09):
between government departments that can sometimes take a long time
and be very bureaucratic. Any obvious areas that you could
apply that sort of technology to.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
Yeah, Look, I think for me, the standout candidate is
how we manage identities and people's identities with it across
all the government departments. I think blockchain technologies lend itself
very well to that sort of stuff, and just protecting
people's most private information. I think that is going to
be increasingly important given the future that BENC is coming
(35:38):
with AIS, because you know, if you think hackers are bad,
now imagine them under seeing the power Amazon to do
what they're doing. It'll be horrific, and frankly, the security
companies aren't built to deal with that. So I think
identity is certainly first and foremost for me, but also
things like, you know, even just how we run our democracy,
(36:00):
information and voting. There are already several governments out there
not South Korea is one of them who are voting
using blockchain technology help to feed up accounts, but also
gets through the photo fraud which was a big topic.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
In America again. So there are there are really.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
Simple, you know, from our point of view, simple technologies
that can be extended into that space. And you know,
with the consumer data right and all of that stuff
rolling through, like we think there's we need to have
something that's not fit for yesterday, which is kind of
possibly where we're going to end up. We need something
that's going to be fit for this world where you've
got ali agents doing what it's doing. And I think
(36:38):
that touches on your point, Rob, But the people making
the decisions probably looking backwards, not forwards, because it's hard
to keep up.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
There is one point of view, Paul. Just to follow
on from that thought, you know, it's easy to get
depressed about that just when you think about the chances
or how you would get this sort of decision making
made properly from the center the other viewers that it
won't be Let's forget about it. Let's accept that in fact,
this is going to bubble up from what people do
(37:06):
at a more micro level in individual companies and businesses
and bits of operation, and eventually the people at the
top will be dragged along to understanding it. And may well,
I think that's happening in health. In health technology, it's
been much more widely applied out in community and private
enterprise health organizations. I see it happening a little bit
(37:27):
in fintech as well, and I think perhaps it will
bubble up from outside rather than be taken as a
kind of a digital program. The moment you get these
big government agencies sometimes seems to squash things rather than
promoting them.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
I was really inspired by the work that ald retained
it in Taiwan when she was a government Digital Minister,
and that does zero interitative that she led there, which
was really allowing all citizens to basically contribute to governments.
To government I to open, complete transparency on the source code.
(38:05):
And to the point about voting systems, you know, we
have a system where you put a thick on a
piece of paper once every three years to elect are
representative and so much more. They were invented. They deployed
a system based on pollus which drives towards consensus rather
than adversarial politics. And so it was really interesting almost
(38:27):
the gamification of political decision making through crowd sourcing and
much more wide participation. So again, all of these are
just innovations that are are available to be used and
can be deployed. We have, but because of the funding
structures that none of it, none of it happens at all.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
I just want to wrap up with, ideally, hopefully an
idea from each of you about what we could do
now given that we you know, we're very fiscally constrained
at the moment. We have a government with a growth mindset.
They say they're very sort of tech friendly, but the
bottom line is everything. Ben, for instance, you have suggested
(39:08):
we need some sort of agency or group within government
that takes a view across government on technology investment. If
we don't have that, we're going to continue to have
the siloed approach to investing in the infrastructure that could
underpin a lot of the stuff that will ultimately make
government more efficient and equitable.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Yeah. And whether that's a centralized government department in the
traditional mold, I would push back on. I think working
towards more decentralized collaborative initiatives just to make progress, I
think would probably be a better idea than establishing yet
(39:49):
another department in the bureaucracy. I think to basically pull
it apart and enable and that will involve funding some
kind of decentralized innovation model that gets applied and addresses
the concerns around risk and so create maybe an innovation
(40:09):
sandbox opportunity. But you know as soon as you create
a slope that people will walk downhill. And so to
basically create an environment where innovation that gets deployed into
government services is there's a really clear pass for that.
I think a decentralized model is probably the better way
to do that.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Paul, from your perspective, We've got an amazing community here
of blockchain developers. I'm doing sort of gaming applications, fintech applications.
What would you like to see sort of brought to
bear on these problems facing government?
Speaker 5 (40:42):
So I've got kind of a two face response. So
I think we should come up with a vision. So
Singapore is a country without a lot of resources, and
it's innovated into finance because that was a natural place
to do it. And I think, you know our days
are relying on commodity driven economy is probably done. So
I think if we can lean into a vision as
a government that says we want to be tech vest
(41:03):
and truly mean it, not just the talking, but truly
mean it. And then you know, I think Rob's point.
You know, there's a whole bunch of very clever, smart,
nimble stetups in New Zealand, and I think if we
can get Central to buy into supporting those businesses adopting
their technology for the greater good as well as supporting
(41:24):
them to export, I think that would be a really
good outcome climper nation as well as our central government services.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
And last word for you, Rob, what would you really
like to see and what do you think we could achieve?
Having been through the inferno of working at in the
health sector and seeing firsthand after coming from sky City
and the likes you know that have a very much
a profit incentive to be efficient and to automate as
much as possible and that sort of thing. What would
(41:52):
you like to see and what do you think could
be achievable in terms of tackling you know that the
waste and the inefficiency in health and other government departments.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
I think the key here is innovation, and I think
at the moment in New Zealand we think about innovation
in the wrong way. We think about it at kind
of the institutional and in vesta level, or perhaps at
the private equity level. What change needs is to have
the government being able to think much more in a
venture capital mode about how it gets things moving, how
(42:25):
it encourages good ideas that are coming up and gets
them impluented at a smaller level. They don't have to
find these big macro solutions to things. The solutions probably
are very disaggregated, so you might as well approach them
in that way. So that really comes back around, I
think to what Ben and Paul have both been saying.
(42:46):
We just need I don't want to set up another
agency either, but we just need to create the scope
where our focus is on encouraging innovation, which is of
its nature usually pretty small when it starts, and you
have to be prepared to take risks with that. The
idea that the big money coming in from offshore is
going to do this then or the next thing, I
think it's a complete cul de sac. It's going to
(43:08):
take us nowhere. So that's the key thing.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Okay, lots of great ideas there, and the Doge machine
will roll on in the US and we'll keep an
eye on that, and we'll keep an eye on what's
going on in government. But thanks so much, for all
those great ideas. We'll put show notes up on the
website linking to Ben's book and Paul's work with the
hackathon and everything else. So thanks so much guys for
(43:32):
coming on the Business of Tech.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
Thank you, Thank you Peter.
Speaker 4 (43:34):
Thanks starving us.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
So there you have some really great ideas there really
about the potential role of decentralized technology and collaboration. But also,
as Rob said, it's about people as well, and it's
about strategy, having a firm plan of what you actually
want to achieve, rather than just taking the hatchet to
government spending for ideological reasons. So hopefully it's something that
(44:07):
the government here will increasingly do do this in an
evidence based way. We've got Judith Collins as the Minister
for digitizing government. She wants more efficiency, she wants better
customer service in government. There are ways to do that
leveraging really good technology. So hopefully she's got some good
(44:27):
ideas out of this as well. But let me know
what you think in the comments on my LinkedIn post.
Show notes are also in the podcast section at Business
deesk dot co dot nz. Lots of links related to
this week's episode. Now you can stream the podcast on
iHeartRadio or your favorite podcast app. Get in touch with
your ideas for upcoming topics and guests. Just email me.
(44:50):
I'm Peter at Peter Griffin dot co dot nz or
I'm really easy to find on LinkedIn and I'd love
to hear from you. Next week, I talk to Carmen
Visselik under a Velocity Global about growing tech trade with India.
Kamen is doing significant business with banks in India and
was under Prime Minister's recent trade delegation to India. She
(45:12):
has some sage advice for tech and digital companies trying
to tap into the vast Indian market that's dropping next Thursday.
Till then, have a great week.
This week on the Business of Tech powered by two
Degrees Business, we're talking DOGE, the Trump Administration's Department of
Government Efficiency. It's tearing through government agencies, laying off tens
of thousands of public servants, and dismantling entire departments such
as US AID. It's all in aid off a grand
plan to slash the US deficit, which sees America pay
(00:27):
iwatering amounts each year to service national debt. Here's how
Elol Musk, doge's chief architect, describes the mission to Fox News.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars,
so from a nominal deficit of two trillion to track
cut the deficit in half to one trillion, or looked
at it in toilet federal spanning, to drop the federal
spanning from seven trillion to sex trillion. We want to
reduce the spending by eliminating waste and fort reduce the
spanning by fifteen percent, which seems really quite achievable. The
(01:01):
government is not efficient and there's a lot of Western frauds,
so we feel confident that fifteen percent reduction can can
be done without affecting any of the critical government services.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Sounds great in theory, but critics argue that the efficiency
drive is really a thinly veiled attempt to weed out
the so called deep state that Trump believes trying to
derail his first presidency. They also claim all hurt US
citizens by radically reducing key functions like Social Security and
the National Institutes of Health. Even the Department of Education
(01:38):
is getting a massive cut. DOAGE claims it's amassed one
hundred and fifty billion US in savings already, thirty percent
of it from contract grant and lease cancellations. Musk tells
us that less than fifteen percent of the spending being
cut is out and out fraud. The next six to
(01:58):
twelve months will reveal the impact of DOGE on the
USA government and on the services that citizens enjoy, but
already governments around the world are considering their own cost
cutting drives. We got off to an early start even
before the Coalition government came into office, with labor trimming
public servant headcount. That's accelerated under the Coalition, which spending
(02:20):
cuts to programs across the board with a similar aim
to cut national debt. We've also got David Seymour's Ministry
of regulation tasked with identifying and cutting superfluous rules and regulations.
Let's be fair, doge is something else entirely with Elon
Musk's team of young geeks given unprecedented access to government records,
(02:43):
it's ripe for conflicts of interest as well, with musks
companies SpaceX and Tesla having received billions in contracts and
subsidies from the US government. But I think most people
have some sympathy for the idea of smaller government and
cutting red tape and using technology to gain more visibility
(03:03):
into government spending and procuring services in a smarter way.
So how could we do doge properly here in New Zealand. Well,
I assembled a super smart panel of people to try
and find out. Joining me this week are Rob Campbell,
Ben Reid, and Paul Quickendon.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Rob Campbell has been a board director and chair of
companies like SkyCity, Tourism Holdings and Somerset Group, as well
as sitting on the boards of government agencies like the
Environmental Protection Agency and tefatu Ura Health New Zealand, where
he was sacked as board chair in February twenty twenty three.
(03:42):
For a LinkedIn post, he wrote that criticized the National
Party's policy on the Three Waters reform. If anyone knows
where the inefficiencies in our largest government agencies are, it's
probably rob Ben Reid returns to the show the christ
Church Futurist and tech can sultant. He's given a lot
of thought to how technology can play a role in
(04:05):
creating a more efficient and fairer government in everything from
policymaking to electronic voting, and Paul quickened In rounds out
the panel. Paul's the chief commercial officer and head of
the New Zealand operation of Easy Crypto, the largest locally
owned crypto exchange, which last month was acquired by Australian
owned swift FX. Paul thinks a lot about how decentralized
(04:28):
technologies like the blockchain and smart contracts can be applied
to the big problems facing society. So, without further ado,
here's my chat with the Doge Panel this week on
the Business of Tech. Rob Ben Paul, welcome to the
(04:50):
Business of Tech. Thanks so much for coming on. You're
Jordder so like me, you've probably been watching with a
mix of horror, fascination and sort of amusement. What's been
going on in the US with DOGE, the Department of
Government Efficiency, the Elon Musk led efforts, and boy, it's
(05:11):
just amazing what's coming out every week some of the
things that he has done. Obviously big layoffs in some
government departments, some government departments effectively being dismantled, the likes
of us AID. You're seeing the United States Digital Services,
an agency that was run out of the White House
that's been basically absorbed into DOGE. You've got Elon Musks
(05:34):
essentially saying I need the source code of government to
do this properly. I need to get into every database,
look at every data feed to make sure that what
I'm being told about what is going on in government
is accurate. He's talking about magic money computers that exist
in the US government. A lot of people have said, well, duh, yeah,
that's what the Treasury and others do. They print and
(05:56):
manufacture money. But you've also got a vein I suspect
you agree as well. Of Look, this is actually a
useful thing to do to look at efficiency, waste, and
even fraud. And Musca said he thinks it's probably about
ten to twenty percent of its actual fraud that is
going on where they see they need to fix things.
(06:17):
The rest of it is inefficiency, and it's probably something
you can all relate to. We're all frustrated about how
slow moving and bureaucratic government can be and that is
leading to real problems in society, inequality, slow access to
for instance, healthcare. We've just in the last couple of
(06:38):
days we heard some horrific stories about people having to
wait for cardiograms and potentially that leading to fatal conditions.
So we know there is an efficiency, there are bottlenecks there,
but really Keen, first of all, we will stell it
with you, Rob, with your extensive experience both in business
and obviously as the chair of Ta Fatuura for period
(07:00):
as well, overseeing huge government spending there and a big bureaucracy.
What do you make of dog and is there a
kernel of value on what they're attempting.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
There's a kernel of value in continuously reevaluating what you're
doing to ensure that you are doing it efficiently and effectively,
whether you're in private business or government, and governments are
notoriously not good at this, So there's value in that.
(07:31):
Whether letting a mad axe man into the front door
and having him roam around the government is a good
way of doing that. I'm much less convinced. I don't
think there's much to be said for the way they're
going about it. But that doesn't mean that there isn't
a need to have continual reevaluation of that kind going on.
(07:53):
But as has happened here much lesser levels. The key
to doing any of these exercises is to understand the mechanism,
the model that you're dealing with. Understand what is happening there,
not just deal with it, which with the metrics which
(08:15):
are coming out the far end, but understand what the
model is you're working with. And if you don't do that,
you can go and roam around. Accountants to it quite often,
and just as dangerously, you can go and roam around.
And so we want to cut this, we want to
cut that, we want to do this. But if you
don't understand to come back to it, don't understand the
model of what's going on here, then you're probably going
(08:36):
to cause as much damage as you'll do good. And
I suspect that with the way they're approaching it in
the US, that's highly likely to be the case.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, And that's a big criticism of DOGE so far
is that the team members, while a lot of them
are skilled computer programmers, some of the very young, gifted
people that have come out of Tesla and other companies
like that, they sort of lack any understanding of government processes, contracts,
how grants work, the actual realities of working in government.
So it's one thing to take a sort of a
(09:07):
tech focus on this, and they know how efficient tech
can be, but the actual workings of government is a
completely different thing. And without doing it in conjunction with
all those people who have that domain knowledge, I guess
you're going to run into trouble.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Yeah, and two steps there, Peter one, I agree with
the way you frame it that I would go even
further and say that it's not enough just to understand the
current machinery, because it's a fair bet the current machinery
is clumsy and wrong and obscuring things. You've got to
go back to that real model of what it is
we're trying to do here, How are we trying to
do it? Does that make sense? And the technology and
(09:44):
the accounting and everything else really follows on after that,
You know, you can send in some bright tech people.
There's not really any different descending and some bright accountants
to look at one of these things. If you really
don't understand what you're trying to achieve and have a
good model of what you try to achieve, the danger
is that you will just cause distruction, not creation.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
And what's your take on Doge? Obviously you've written a
book last year, Fast Forward Our Tailor, which is really
advocating for digital first government, things like legislating full service
application programming interfaces to make government a lot more efficient
and equitable. What's your take on what you've seen sort
(10:25):
of unfold in the US with Doge.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, like Rob says, sort of going in there with
a chainsaw is you know, we'll wait to see how
it all turns out. But I mean I've listened. I
think the US is a very different political environment to
hear and out there are and I think what I
had a very interesting podcast recently where the Gray Area Podcasts,
(10:50):
where the speaker was basically describing the underlying political access here.
Whereas you've got status quoests who seem to think that
everything's fine, versus brokennests who think that everything is broken,
and you have the extreme brokennest wing have now taken
hold of the leaves of power, and so really they
really didn't think it was worth fixing, if you if
(11:12):
you like, So, I think part of the strategy here
is to go in and just utterly dismantle what is there,
and it can't be any more broken than it was before. So,
you know, I think that, as I say, the US
context is very different to hear it in out you know,
the book. In my book, you know, it was really
(11:33):
thinking about how emerging technology can provide solutions to deliver
our rutcomes. And if we agree that productivity, accessibility, efficiency
are all outcomes of you know, horizon points we should
be aiming towards, then you know, employing some of these
modern technologies is arguably, you know, the way to achieve
(11:53):
that very quickly. Yeah, So look some of the ideas
that I you know, I like to reimagine the state
quote and I wouldn't say that Altibor's government is broken,
but I'd say it has a whole lot of inertia
inside it. You have a permanent public service constitutionally, which
(12:14):
leads to almost a culture of risk avoidance and and
you know, reluctance to rise significant change and if you
if you think about, you know, the modern services that
we're that we're consuming from, you know, the frontier technology
firms right now, then they are all software interfaces. And
(12:38):
so if you could re imagine the service delivery channels
of government as being software and application programming interface, and
increasingly that you could have an AI agent that would
interact with government services, then I think you could probably
take out aultimate a lot of the roles that are happening,
you know, in government right now, and and actually build
(13:00):
of a better service outcomes there. Finally, those better service
outcomes is the front front loading of the whole process
that they're certainly not doing in the in the US
right now.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Okay, and we'll come back to some of the suggestions
you have in Fast Forward al Tara around this that
may help. Paul. You're at easy Crypto at the moment,
you're really passionate and understand blockchain technologies, and you're actually
running a hackathon on this particular issue. Was this sort
(13:31):
of inspired by Doage seeing what was going on in
the US and thinking, actually, could we do this in
a sensible way and get some of our most innovative
technologists to contribute to it.
Speaker 5 (13:41):
So we wrote a series of provocations for the Hack
of Time some time ago, and at that time, the
rumors of what DOGE was going to be and what
it's turned out to be a very different and what
I mean by that, as DOGE was trying to drive
some efficiency, there was talk of what chains being embedded
in some US processes to streamline stuff and where you know,
(14:02):
I represent a sector that believes that blockchains do have
a role to play and some of that, and so
we write a series of provocations. But it's not just
about building government departments on blockchains and eliminating and that's
not that's not what the Hack of pons about. It
was just really trying to get people to think about
some real world use cases and those solutions that would
have meaningful value. And given you know, we all touch government,
(14:24):
central or local government in some way, shape and form, like,
it's an easy thing for us to all from the
outside look in and go maybe we could do this
a little bit better. And you know, I think as
citizens were allowed to question our services are delivered to us,
and I think that's part of a good robust democracy.
(14:45):
But we are not advocating for what's you know, the
ideologically driven stuff that's coming out of DOGE. Now, that's
that's not where we started. And you know, again like
the one that I think you know, we were faring
to around, could you run in an expense system a
government expenses a blockchain. That was just one of maybe
twenty five provocations to the teams. So you know, we're
(15:06):
just trying to get people who's great mat of stimulated
when we wrote this sometime again.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah, that's great, and I'm sure that's something actually the
likes of Judith Collins, the Minister for Digitizing Government, is
actually going to welcome, you know, sort of innovation in
this space. But Rob, you know, you're the one who's
had the most experience actually on the inside of working
with big government departments. I think at one point you
said New Zealand health system you described as a blocked
(15:32):
digestive system, which is a nice metaphor for it. But
can you sort of elaborate on that in a big
department like that? And health is a sort of I
guess is a special case and they are working to
try and fix it. But where are the sorts of
places that you really see the inefficiency and the wastage
that just really starts to result in a degradation of
(15:55):
service for citizens.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Well, I think I think health was and still is
a particularly ramshackle. It doesn't really even deserve to be
called a system. It's a kind of a ramshackle assembly
of different systems. And if you take, for example, the
recent stuff about t FUTU or are trying to run
the finances on a spreadsheet, Well, actually what they were
trying to do was take a whole lot of systems
(16:19):
that were producing different financial information and had to assemble
it somehow had never been assembled before, and the obvious
way to assemble it was on a spreadsheet. It wasn't
that anyone had started out wanting to manage it that way,
to be fair to the people currently running that. But
the reimagining thing, it sounds a bit of a grand phrase,
but there is enormous scope to improve these systems. I'm
(16:45):
working with a small fintech setup at the moment that
has some ideas about payments and accountability and audits and
all those kind of things that could improve distribution of benefits,
for example, And there are any of these ideas around
and what there was what there needs to be is
an openness to consider, apply and experiment with those within
(17:08):
the public service, which there isn't. So what you had
in health was a whole lot of ideas that had
been thrown at what was when Tavardaora was formed, the
largest software development house in New Zealand, accumulating people who
were defending often incompatible projects that were working against one another,
(17:33):
and simply because no one had really stood back and
properly thought about what are we trying to achieve here,
what are the priorities, what are the available technologies. So
they were basically trying to assess various offers that were
being made to them by various other providers and then
rebuild them in some way. So it was no wonder.
(17:55):
It was a mess, and I think that's not uncommon.
So some of that culture has to change, but I
don't really think that's all that difficult. I mean, New
Zealand does have a pretty active ecosystem of people coming
up with quite practical ideas which are not moonshots by
any stretch of the imagination, but are immediately applicable, which
(18:16):
could be picked up by government departments. And there is
a degree of sclerosis within those government departments, as there
is within within a number of larger private companies too.
I think the cause of that is a lack of
understanding both of the models of what is being done,
(18:38):
but also of the technologies at politician level, at board
member level, and at senior executive level. There are a
lot of people within the public service that understand, are
open to and would welcome innovation, but it is really
being stopped by a lack of understanding from the type.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
In my view, I totally agree with that, and I
think what I'd also add is structurally the way that
the bureaucracy is structured into these monolithics, siloed departments where
actually a technology student will be architected with common components
across all of these and they're you know, there were
you know, there is a g CDO trying to coordinate
(19:17):
across all of them. But actually, you know, services like identity,
like payments would be common across the whole government platform,
and yet every individual department still operates their own to
some degree. And so, you know, I think there's this
fundamentally re architecting the bureaucracy is going to be a
consequence of attempting to digitize the whole government, and these
(19:42):
these departments are not in the mood for that right.
They operate with a with a large degree of inerture.
As I said, So, one of the considerations I would
say is why do we have permanent government departments, government agencies?
Why do we not just the same way as we
have an election every three years, Why don't we just
put us sinessa limit that you know, a government department
will live for five years and then it will be
(20:04):
recycled and shut down. And so you know, why could
you not actually derive some of this permanent refreshment of
your bureaucracy into some legislation.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Yeah, and you know, one of the ideas in the book,
as I said at the start Digital First, government legislated
full Services API. No government service can be enabled without
API implementation. And for people who don't understand what that is,
this is a sort of a plug and essentially that
allows data to be transferred between systems in a seamless
(20:39):
sort of way. So, and that's something I hear a
lot across government. It is very siloed, and it's sort
of by design, partly for the reasons that I think
you've alluded to that they don't want to change, but
also citizens don't necessarily want to change. We don't even
want a digital driver's license in this country. There's a
lot of opposition to putting data all in one place,
(21:01):
even if there's a good case that it's going to
help people get more equitable access.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
So my take on all of this conversation is that
it's when you are in health and you're a nurse.
You're very clear what you're doing and the goals you
know is the patient right in front of you. But
as you start to get further away your loose side
of the outcomes you're trying to deliver. It happens in
big companies. I used to work for a tower communications company.
It happens there as well, and you can get fixated
(21:27):
on your little project and your little thing and have
no actual connection to the outcome you're trying to do
the thing. The observable thing for me is that across
all of the bureocracy that is government is there's no
single vision or platforms. And you know, you've talked you
know being and I agree with some of what you said.
I may have some challenges with some others parts of
what you said, but that's okay. You know, things about
(21:49):
identity and access management, how that's done, my personal information,
how that is shared or not shared. Payments because it's
still about moving money and did you money around. Those
sorts of things all should be a foundation blocks for
every government department that builds on it. But that's not
how it's been constructed. And it's because they were organically developed,
(22:12):
you know, as they were digitizing. They're probably digitized at
different times. You know, I can remember before the dhvs
became an amalgamated set, like they were just hospitals, So
you know, they all kind of grew and then you
have such huge technology debt that trying to bring it
together what you're talking about being which is the Amazon
(22:33):
way and API first, but you had a very charismatic,
single leader at the top who was able to enforce
that stuff and doing that through a public service, that's
a real challenge, and you know, you almost get to
a point in time where you have to say, we
have to start a new we have to start with
(22:53):
some foundational building blocks and starting new.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
I think you also have to have regard to the
way finance and spending ability is spread through the public service.
It really operates on what I've always seen is kind
of a jamjar theory where there's an appropriation of money
for a particular purpose, which is to find ahead of time,
and that's what's available for that purpose, and that goes
(23:16):
into that jam jar. And if you're managing a public
service operation, you have a whole set of these jam
jars which have been predetermined for you, and what you're
not doing is really ever sitting back and seeing where
the money would be most effectively spent, So you are
spending it out of each jar, and that does lead
to a kind of a very inefficient decision making system
(23:40):
as well. So my point is it's embedded in the
way they're financed, embedded in the way that they have
the ability to spend, which entrenches it so that actually
saving some money or doing something better in one part
of the operation doesn't necessarily make any progress for you.
Speaker 5 (23:58):
Again, that's where we'd think blockchain a role to play,
because if a blockchain system was there and every government
department could see that someone's building a brand new payment system,
you had some sort of edict that said, why don't
you reuse what we've got rather than build something new.
Those types of things is where you know, we think
blockchains are really powerful because they're quite transparent in that regard,
(24:19):
and they're also really good at managing the flow of
information because it's always there, you know. That's kind of
the other key element of blockchains. And so having a
system where what someone did in twenty twenty three is
available to the people in twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five,
so they can kind of see the evolution, I think
is also a powerful thing around blockchain. So that's why, Peter,
(24:42):
you know, we did have these publications written. So we
do think there are good uses for blockchain technology in
the public sector, but it's not a be all in
or we're not trying to take it all over.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
I mean, I would say that every government in the
West world, in the democratic world, is going to be
having the same conversation right now. The UK announced last
week kis that I think gives forty five billion pounds
of efficiencies of cost cutting from AI and digitization their initiative,
and so I think, you know, the Elon Musk led
(25:14):
Doge initiative in the US is driving this conversation of worldwide,
and I think that's an opportunity because if every government
is having the same challenges. Then let's coordinate, let's cooperate,
let's build open gov stack and I'm sure it just
exists so that you can basically just coordinate and take
the best bits from what everybody else is building all
(25:35):
around the world blockchain, but other open source components as well,
and that would be The other principle absolutely is that
unless there is a compelling reason why the software that
is deployed inside government needs to be closed source, then
as a principle, everything that is deployed needs to be
open source. That also mitigates against the enclosure of of
(26:00):
government services by large technology companies who have managed to
basically build significant footprint underneath government services that exists, and
that's going to be quite hard in future if we
don't change direction towards more open source, flexible software to
actually get to wean ourselves off.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, that's a big bone of contention with our local
tech companies. The likes of Ian McCrae from Orion Healthcare.
It felt like he was being his head against the
brick wall dealing with our health system because that big,
big tech procurement is so entrenched, the likes of Microsoft's
and AWS. We have a cloud first strategy and government,
and they are the default providers to offer that.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
The political climate has changed, right, so they are effectively
beholden to a very unpredictable, unstable government which will potentially
could add tariffs reverse tariffs to the cost of those
and so it would be very at idea I think
to build some resilience and diversity in voice into where
(27:04):
we're procuring most of the platforms we're running our then
it systems on. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Absolutely, I think often government under official government officials often
underestimate the extent to which those very large mega vendors
are running their own business model quite effectively too. And
it may coincide with your needs it or it may not,
but it's not The aim is not that and so
(27:29):
the more we can take a open attitude towards that,
the better. And I think for a non technologist like me,
which I say straight away I am, the more you
get involved in the stuff, the more you learn how
much better protection there is in terms of accountability, auditability,
and transparency in open systems. So totally agree with that.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, Rob. One of the premise of DOGE is that
they need sort of access to the source code of government.
Is they don't trust the government officials. You know, they
talk about things like social security. There are problems with
the so called death file, the record of deceased individuals.
They claim that people have been receiving benefits for years
(28:12):
after they've actually been deceased. So there are issues like
that which you may get given a report put on
your desk as someone in governance off a government department,
and you get one view off it, but the reality
is different. So that's the argument for the deep reach
they need to have into these government departments. What was
(28:33):
your sense when you were sharing to fatu Aura? Could
you actually trust the information? Did you have faith in
the information that was being presented to you that you
had to make major, potentially hundreds of millions of dollars
type decisions based on that?
Speaker 4 (28:48):
It was not trustworthy. People were trustworthy, the people were honest,
but they were working within systems that couldn't be relied
upon to be accurate or compatible with one another. Absolutely
a problem, and you know, I think it's no wonder
you know that there are inefficiencies, I'm sure, and I
don't know about the US system, but Elon Musk has
(29:10):
probably benefited from more of the inefficiencies than anyone else
in history, so he would know. But here there are undoubtedly,
you know, individually small but possibly collective inaccuracies and wrong
payments and wrong allocations going on all the time. And
it isn't everyone's interests that we improve those and improve
(29:32):
them quickly. And the better that's, the quicker that's done,
the better, So, you know, I think it almost Peter,
I know you sort of wanted to hang this discussion
around Doge, but actually the discussion is much better if
you ignore Doze in my view, and look at what
we really need here and and what our problems are
(29:52):
and the solutions that are available.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Well, just one, you know, the immediate issues in front
of our health system. One of them is you know,
they're making a call at the moment about letting go
essentially a large part of the health IT workforce, from
you know to fatu Aura. Interesting your views on that
rib at a time where it seems that digital health
(30:15):
and preventative healthcare and all the digital tools that are
available now around the world to provide those sorts of services.
I mean, does this make sense to you that we
need to sort of sort of burn it all down
and rebuild it, or are you really worried about the
loss of capability that's going to come with us.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Well, a couple of things there. One is you've got
to be very careful in politicians and public service executives
talk about the job cuts they're making. Typically most of
those jobs that no one's in. They like to announce
that they're making job cuts, but often their vacant positions
that they're cutting, So you've got to watch the numbers.
(30:55):
There was scope for rationalization in the way the Ministry
of Health and the individual health boards had built up
their digital teams. It wasn't well structured or well organized,
so there was scope for rationalization. And that I'm just
not close enough to know whether the decisions being made
now are the right ones in that but you know,
this is not a matter of having the most people.
(31:17):
It's a matter of having the right systems and well
directed thinking going on about it. So yeah, I'm just
too far away to know now. But there was certainly
scope for rationalization.
Speaker 5 (31:28):
And you could see in the US the law of
unindenda consequences that are about to flow through, right, and
the people who are indulge and let's be honesty and
I think may still be the richest man alife, but
Tesla's shoes are forward, aren't aren't going to be hurt, right,
But the funding cuts, the decision that they're making are
going to flow through and start affecting everyday people's lives,
(31:51):
whether it's their benefits, whether it's their health, whether it's
their education, those sorts of things, and you know, even
inside of you know, the New yealing house system. If
we if we do get to a position where we
take an idealistic we need to cut x amount of
people from the its stuff, it'll be the patience that
suffer because while while those people it's very hard to
(32:14):
connect what they're doing, I can guarantee you because we
saw it in Locatto when there was a big hack, stuff,
bad stuff will happen. You're no one in that organization
is setting out to do a bad job. They're actually
doing things. And if we dis arbitrarily cut it, and
I've worked in an organization that used to do this,
we're going to go, hey, we're just going to take
fifteen percent of our workforce out this year, bad stuff happens.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
Yeah, one hundred percent. My attitude, my argument would be
that there was a need to rationalize duplication and confusion,
and the projects that were being worked on, not that
the certain I don't have no idea whether the numbers
were right or on. What I would absolutely guarantee is,
from what I know of the senior executives and directors
and commissioners within that organization at the moment, the chances
(32:59):
that they are making the right decisions about what it
projects to proceed with them which not are very low.
It's almost sitting there making the wrong decisions.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Well and this and this again goes back to that
question of transparency, right, So there are lots of if
you could see the source code, if you could see
the architecture, if the actual applications were in GET in
a GET repository where people could download them and contribute
to them, I just I just feel that there'd be
more collective intelligence about some of the decisions being made.
(33:29):
But we have this sort of hierarchical, very centralized decision
making apparatus which is being shown up to basically not
really big sets for purpose in you know, in what
really in the next you know, two to three years,
we're going to see AI just deployed throughout our entire
economy and potentially drive you know, complete automation of pretty
(33:51):
much all cognitive work. Anything that is done in front
of a computer screen will be you know, arguably some
of the stuff that I'm seeing will be the doable
by an AI agent within one or two years. And
so how are we preparing to take advantage of that change?
And then also where's the conversation nationally as a different topic,
(34:12):
but about what happens when people are disestablished from their
roles by AI technology. So, you know, how are we
going to work towards some kind of fair transition to
a post AI labor market?
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, and you go into in your book, you know,
the concept that has been discussed about a universal basic
income and things like that, which is happening that discussion
and trials off it in places like Scandinavia. But on
that transparency issue, Paul, as you've mentioned, you think, you know,
blockchain is very amenable to that goal. We haven't really
(34:46):
seen any experimentation in government. We've got Treasury, Reserve Bank
rather looking at the concept of a central bank digital currency.
They've put quite a long time frame on that. Nothing
as much is going to happen, And is there anything
obvious to you where this sort of technology with things
like smart contracts, you know, that automation of the handshaking
(35:09):
between government departments that can sometimes take a long time
and be very bureaucratic. Any obvious areas that you could
apply that sort of technology to.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
Yeah, Look, I think for me, the standout candidate is
how we manage identities and people's identities with it across
all the government departments. I think blockchain technologies lend itself
very well to that sort of stuff, and just protecting
people's most private information. I think that is going to
be increasingly important given the future that BENC is coming
(35:38):
with AIS, because you know, if you think hackers are bad,
now imagine them under seeing the power Amazon to do
what they're doing. It'll be horrific, and frankly, the security
companies aren't built to deal with that. So I think
identity is certainly first and foremost for me, but also
things like, you know, even just how we run our democracy,
(36:00):
information and voting. There are already several governments out there
not South Korea is one of them who are voting
using blockchain technology help to feed up accounts, but also
gets through the photo fraud which was a big topic.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
In America again. So there are there are really.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
Simple, you know, from our point of view, simple technologies
that can be extended into that space. And you know,
with the consumer data right and all of that stuff
rolling through, like we think there's we need to have
something that's not fit for yesterday, which is kind of
possibly where we're going to end up. We need something
that's going to be fit for this world where you've
got ali agents doing what it's doing. And I think
(36:38):
that touches on your point, Rob, But the people making
the decisions probably looking backwards, not forwards, because it's hard
to keep up.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
There is one point of view, Paul. Just to follow
on from that thought, you know, it's easy to get
depressed about that just when you think about the chances
or how you would get this sort of decision making
made properly from the center the other viewers that it
won't be Let's forget about it. Let's accept that in fact,
this is going to bubble up from what people do
(37:06):
at a more micro level in individual companies and businesses
and bits of operation, and eventually the people at the
top will be dragged along to understanding it. And may well,
I think that's happening in health. In health technology, it's
been much more widely applied out in community and private
enterprise health organizations. I see it happening a little bit
(37:27):
in fintech as well, and I think perhaps it will
bubble up from outside rather than be taken as a
kind of a digital program. The moment you get these
big government agencies sometimes seems to squash things rather than
promoting them.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
I was really inspired by the work that ald retained
it in Taiwan when she was a government Digital Minister,
and that does zero interitative that she led there, which
was really allowing all citizens to basically contribute to governments.
To government I to open, complete transparency on the source code.
(38:05):
And to the point about voting systems, you know, we
have a system where you put a thick on a
piece of paper once every three years to elect are
representative and so much more. They were invented. They deployed
a system based on pollus which drives towards consensus rather
than adversarial politics. And so it was really interesting almost
(38:27):
the gamification of political decision making through crowd sourcing and
much more wide participation. So again, all of these are
just innovations that are are available to be used and
can be deployed. We have, but because of the funding
structures that none of it, none of it happens at all.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
I just want to wrap up with, ideally, hopefully an
idea from each of you about what we could do
now given that we you know, we're very fiscally constrained
at the moment. We have a government with a growth mindset.
They say they're very sort of tech friendly, but the
bottom line is everything. Ben, for instance, you have suggested
(39:08):
we need some sort of agency or group within government
that takes a view across government on technology investment. If
we don't have that, we're going to continue to have
the siloed approach to investing in the infrastructure that could
underpin a lot of the stuff that will ultimately make
government more efficient and equitable.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Yeah. And whether that's a centralized government department in the
traditional mold, I would push back on. I think working
towards more decentralized collaborative initiatives just to make progress, I
think would probably be a better idea than establishing yet
(39:49):
another department in the bureaucracy. I think to basically pull
it apart and enable and that will involve funding some
kind of decentralized innovation model that gets applied and addresses
the concerns around risk and so create maybe an innovation
(40:09):
sandbox opportunity. But you know as soon as you create
a slope that people will walk downhill. And so to
basically create an environment where innovation that gets deployed into
government services is there's a really clear pass for that.
I think a decentralized model is probably the better way
to do that.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Paul, from your perspective, We've got an amazing community here
of blockchain developers. I'm doing sort of gaming applications, fintech applications.
What would you like to see sort of brought to
bear on these problems facing government?
Speaker 5 (40:42):
So I've got kind of a two face response. So
I think we should come up with a vision. So
Singapore is a country without a lot of resources, and
it's innovated into finance because that was a natural place
to do it. And I think, you know our days
are relying on commodity driven economy is probably done. So
I think if we can lean into a vision as
a government that says we want to be tech vest
(41:03):
and truly mean it, not just the talking, but truly
mean it. And then you know, I think Rob's point.
You know, there's a whole bunch of very clever, smart,
nimble stetups in New Zealand, and I think if we
can get Central to buy into supporting those businesses adopting
their technology for the greater good as well as supporting
(41:24):
them to export, I think that would be a really
good outcome climper nation as well as our central government services.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
And last word for you, Rob, what would you really
like to see and what do you think we could achieve?
Having been through the inferno of working at in the
health sector and seeing firsthand after coming from sky City
and the likes you know that have a very much
a profit incentive to be efficient and to automate as
much as possible and that sort of thing. What would
(41:52):
you like to see and what do you think could
be achievable in terms of tackling you know that the
waste and the inefficiency in health and other government departments.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
I think the key here is innovation, and I think
at the moment in New Zealand we think about innovation
in the wrong way. We think about it at kind
of the institutional and in vesta level, or perhaps at
the private equity level. What change needs is to have
the government being able to think much more in a
venture capital mode about how it gets things moving, how
(42:25):
it encourages good ideas that are coming up and gets
them impluented at a smaller level. They don't have to
find these big macro solutions to things. The solutions probably
are very disaggregated, so you might as well approach them
in that way. So that really comes back around, I
think to what Ben and Paul have both been saying.
(42:46):
We just need I don't want to set up another
agency either, but we just need to create the scope
where our focus is on encouraging innovation, which is of
its nature usually pretty small when it starts, and you
have to be prepared to take risks with that. The
idea that the big money coming in from offshore is
going to do this then or the next thing, I
think it's a complete cul de sac. It's going to
(43:08):
take us nowhere. So that's the key thing.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Okay, lots of great ideas there, and the Doge machine
will roll on in the US and we'll keep an
eye on that, and we'll keep an eye on what's
going on in government. But thanks so much, for all
those great ideas. We'll put show notes up on the
website linking to Ben's book and Paul's work with the
hackathon and everything else. So thanks so much guys for
(43:32):
coming on the Business of Tech.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
Thank you, Thank you Peter.
Speaker 4 (43:34):
Thanks starving us.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
So there you have some really great ideas there really
about the potential role of decentralized technology and collaboration. But also,
as Rob said, it's about people as well, and it's
about strategy, having a firm plan of what you actually
want to achieve, rather than just taking the hatchet to
government spending for ideological reasons. So hopefully it's something that
(44:07):
the government here will increasingly do do this in an
evidence based way. We've got Judith Collins as the Minister
for digitizing government. She wants more efficiency, she wants better
customer service in government. There are ways to do that
leveraging really good technology. So hopefully she's got some good
(44:27):
ideas out of this as well. But let me know
what you think in the comments on my LinkedIn post.
Show notes are also in the podcast section at Business
deesk dot co dot nz. Lots of links related to
this week's episode. Now you can stream the podcast on
iHeartRadio or your favorite podcast app. Get in touch with
your ideas for upcoming topics and guests. Just email me.
(44:50):
I'm Peter at Peter Griffin dot co dot nz or
I'm really easy to find on LinkedIn and I'd love
to hear from you. Next week, I talk to Carmen
Visselik under a Velocity Global about growing tech trade with India.
Kamen is doing significant business with banks in India and
was under Prime Minister's recent trade delegation to India. She
(45:12):
has some sage advice for tech and digital companies trying
to tap into the vast Indian market that's dropping next Thursday.
Till then, have a great week.
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