Phillip Duncan: WeatherWatch Head Analyst on the merger between NIWA and MetService

A weather forecaster's hoping there can be clearer skies for our Government weather agencies with a merger on the way. 

Legislation's coming to merge NIWA and MetService before the end of the year. 

The Government says it'll deliver a more efficient agency, combining operations and streamlining back-office functions. 

WeatherWatch's Phillip Duncan told Andrew Dickens he wants MetService's clear communication skills to be central to the new agency. 

He says it's compared to NIWA, which frequently uses extreme words that often don't come true. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The governments announced legislation to merge Niwa a met service
and will be introduced later this year. It's all to
save money and to streamline our weather forecasting service. The
Minister of for State Owned Enterprises, Simeon Brown, says that
it makes absolutely no sense to have two separate entities,
no kidding. Philip Duncan is the head analyst at weather
Watch New Zealand, and he joins me, now, good morning

(00:20):
to here.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Philip, Good morning Andrew.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
You're the head analyst, or the only analyst.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Pretty much only at these days.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Very good okay. Who is better Niwa or met service
and who should actually take.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Charge met service? They're the ones that are tasked to
do the job that we tax fund them to do,
and they've got a fairly strong reputation. I know that
they've had times over the years where they've got things
wrong like we all have, but they're the ones that
have pretty much got the infrastructure, and not just that,
but the mindset of understanding how to communicate and use

(00:54):
the right words at the right time, something that is
definitely missing from newa who use quite a stream words
quite frequently and find themselves looking a bit silly after
the event doesn't come through.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Okay, so you would agree the merger is the best outcome.
And I think the thing that you would love the
most about it is open data sharing. Tell me about that.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yes, if you had open data, we wouldn't be in
this problem in the first place, because what would have
happened is fifteen years ago. And by the way, it's
fantastic to hear the government finally saying what we've been
telling them for nearly fifteen years now, and some of
them really denied that this was happening. So it's good
to see that saying the right words. That's fantastic. But
you know, the infrastructure that NIWA has got with their

(01:36):
quote unquote supercomputer, which is just a large computer they've got,
but that computing power mixed with mat services, rain radar
would have produced some really fantastic products from the government itself.
But because the government is really bad at sharing stuff
from department to department. So I'll give you a good example,
many many people in New Zealand volunteered their time to

(01:58):
give up where the data, to write it down on
little books and seed that into neeware. For many many
years now. NEEWA believes that that data that was given
by volunteers is their intellectual property and they own it,
so they don't share it with anyone then, and you've
got met Service on the other side saying the same
thing about the rain radar that we all tax funded
for them, the public and if they just shared that stuff,

(02:19):
you wouldn't need and MEE were competing against met Service,
that would never have evolved. Instead, what would have evolved
is the New Zealand government having some really amazing products.
Open data would fix that and put us online with
the rest of the modern world.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
So basically you're saying a merger will save costs and
also come up with better forecasts, and that's all good.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah. The only worry I've got is that with this merger,
if it's still the same knee, we're management running whatever
else they spin out, and then it's just smoke and
mirrors and nothing's really been done other than save a
few dollars. The public haven't gained anything from that. So
I hope that they structure us with a brand fresh
new space and management, and also one that's open and transparent,

(02:58):
which NIWA definitely has not been. To media outlets and
to ministers as well. They've been quite dishonest.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Thank you so much for your time today, Philip.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
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