Archive for the ‘New Zealand government’ Category

New Zealand businesses urged to use tech more cleverly

Wednesday, August 7th, 2013

The New Zealand government has taken it upon itself to urge New Zealand businesses to use internet technology better.

At a conference in early July in Wellington, the New Zealand Productivity Commission said the country’s productivity growth has been persistently low when compared to other OECD countries.

Among the problems were the fact that information communications technology (ICT) is not used as well as it could be to improve business productivity in New Zealand.

Sapere Research Group principal Hayden Glass, who spoke about research he conducted with Eli Hefter on the subject, said the debate was currently stuck on business access to technology.

“The debate should no longer be about access and it should go beyond technology. The debate is now about business use.”

According to Statistics New Zealand, 70 per cent of businesses in New Zealand had a website, which was less than the 96 per cent of companies which used the internet.

Of these websites, though, only 19 per cent had the capacity to accept online orders, and only 12 per cent would accept online payments.

Most of these websites were “basically brochures”, Glass said.

“In terms of selling things our businesses are much less developed.

“There’s still some work to do in terms of taking advantage of the technologies that are available.”

New Zealand was ranked seventh in the world for use of the internet but only seventeenth when it came to the country’s ability ability to extract economic value from the internet.

To read more on this story, click here.

Business set to cruise to online success

Tuesday, July 30th, 2013

Two New Zealand women have tapped into the the country’s tourist trade to create a burgeoning online business.

Wendy London from Hawera and Deborah DeNard of Wellington are set to launch CruiseBubble.com, New Zealand’s first online guide specifically for visiting cruise passengers, in October.

Currently, the two women are accepting registrations from businesses that want to be featured on the site.

“Our target is 1500 for this season and anything above that is really cool,” London said.

The idea was born in 2005 out of Tourism New Zealand’s desire to use the internet more to promote the island nation.

“Tourism New Zealand released the 2005-2015 strategy and one of the key issues there was to ensure tourism businesses could utilise broadband,” London said.

CruiseBubble.com does just that, telling cruise passengers where to shop, what attractions to visit and who to call for anything they might need, all in one handy internet location.

In 2012, 130 cruise ships visited New Zealand with 755 port calls and a total of 209,000 visitors – compared to 17,000 in 1996. Contribution to GDP was $410m with 5633 jobs created.

To read more on this story, click here.

Copyright law ‘will not change’

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

The New Zealand government recently passed legislation that gives ISPs the choice to send up to 3 copyright infringement notices to suspected copyright infringers. If they still persist, it is expected the Government will eventually give their ISP the ability to disconnect them.

A recent UN report concluded internet access was a human right.

UN special rapporteur Frank La Rue said he was “alarmed by proposals to disconnect users from internet access if they violate intellectual property rights”.

Despite this, Justice Minister Simon Power has said he’s “very satisfied” with the law and will not be looking into changing it.

You can read more over at stuff.co.nz