New Zealand CIO of the Year
Emerging ICT Leader of the Year
Business Transformation through Digital and IT
Community Tech Champions
Best ICT Team Culture & Inclusion
Sustainability Through Technology
Outstanding Contribution to Technology and Business in New Zealand
New Zealand CIO of the Year
New Zealand CIO of the Year
Sponsored by:
Quin Carver
WorkSafe NZ
Quin Carver is the General Manager Digital Transformation at WorkSafe New Zealand - Mahi Haumaru Aotearoa. The company cares deeply about people across Aotearoa and puts significant efforts into transforming New Zealand’s workplace health and safety performance, helping more New Zealanders to come home from work healthy and safe.
Quin is leading a Digital Transformation Programme at WorkSafe. This focuses on using the power of digital and data-driven insights to identify causes of harm in the workplace across multiple industries in New Zealand. The programme is generating insights and enabling efficiencies to provide better services and achieve better outcomes for New Zealanders.
WorkSafe’s aspiration to attain world-class workplace health and safety performance for Aotearoa lays at the foundation of the Digital Transformation Programme (DTP) Quin is leading. In just 18 months, under Quin’s leadership, the digital team has improved and expanded from a small team delivering point projects to a team of over 110 staff members , delivering multiple strategic projects and a digital transformation programme. This success is largely based on Quin Carver’s leadership principles around sharing context and empowering great leaders. WorkSafe is able to improve health and safety outcomes for New Zealanders, by empowering their own people and using the power of technology and modern devices. In addition, Quin believes that any organisation wishing to achieve notable change must prioritise its people, team culture, and diversity and inclusion.
As a leader with a proven successful executive strategy, Quin is committed to support and inspire fellow leaders to use digital technologies to enable higher performance and sustainable progress.
Roxanne Salton
Southern Cross Health Society
Roxanne Salton is the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) at Southern Cross Health Society, where she led the development of a Digital Platform Strategy, aligned to the company’s goals. Salton led the implementation of a new operating model to support the new scaled digital transformation and future enablement of the business, and built up the culture in the face of change. This massive task of modernising services inside and outside the business required a unique set of skills and experiences. Salton took this challenge with a great deal of confidence, as her professional experience includes working previously in sales, product management, as well as strong business acumen, strategic thinking, and knowledge in core technology and services.
Salton’s leadership is based on establishing a sense of ‘togetherness’ within the team, and continuously investing in growth and development of the talent through adaptive leadership. The company exceeded every goal set at the start of the transformation initiative, despite numerous market headwinds, as well as health and societal challenges. In addition, Salton is seen as a key influencer providing transparency and accessibility to all key information assets. Joining just prior to the pandemic in 2019, Salton quickly implemented significant changes in communications across the company, contributing to increased collaboration, enabling future investment roadmaps, and increasing speed to market.
Cobus Nel
Transpower
Cobus Nel is the GM of Information Services and Technology at Transpower New Zealand, which owns and operates New Zealand’s National Grid, including over 12,000km of transmission lines and 178 substations. ‘Transmission Tomorrow’ is Transpower’s strategy that is built around enabling the long-term decarbonisation of New Zealand’s economy. The Information Service and Technology (IST) division led by Nel has been an integral part of this strategy.
Nel strongly advocates for IT professionals constituting a crucial element in organisation’s cohesiveness and strong connectivity across various functions. Nel leads his team by providing thought-leadership and empowering people to be inquisitive and explore ideas that have achievable solutions and measurable outcomes. This approach has been fundamental to sustain Transpower's innovativeness and play a crucial part in New Zealand’s push to electrify the economy and meet its net-zero carbon commitments.
Recently, Transpower’s IST and Operations divisions came together and successfully delivered a new real-time analytical, visualisation, and notification tool for National Co-ordination Centres in Wellington and Hamilton as part of its Situational Intelligence programme. The delivery of this capability under Nel’s strong leadership played an active role in enabling New Zealand's energy future.
Alistair Vickers
Tū Ora Compass Health
Alistair Vickers is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) / Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of Tū Ora Compass Health, the largest primary health organisation in the lower North Island and, an essential part of the regional health ecosystem. Vickers has been the driving force behind Tū Ora’s major digital transformation initiative to support the organisation’s strategic vision – “empowered patients and whānau supported by great primary care in connected communities.” Vickers demonstrated that the ICT strategy acts as an enabler of the organisation’s business strategies, greater resiliency, better collaboration between Tū Ora Compass Health and its partners, and strengthening the safety of its customers’ data.
In 2019, Tū Ora Compass Health experienced a particularly challenging time, caused by the complexity of managing many legacy applications and a complex system which proved to be prone to cyberattacks. With Vickers as CIO, the company remained strong in challenging times, and pushed forward towards building a system that is safe, secure, and better aligned with company strategy.
Vickers’s leadership style is described by his peers as “a whole of system thinker, who can not only think through an end-to-end ICT system, but also the impact it has on the wider business and ultimately, the communities that we serve”. His vision about empowerment became Vickers’s superpower and served well when COVID-19 arrived. The groundwork of user training and new tech delivered in the months prior to the first lockdown helped the company to move to a virtual paradigm at short notice and to keep serving the community to the highest standard.
Emerging ICT Leader of the Year
Emerging ICT Leader of the Year
Sponsored by:
Saba Samiei
MACSO
Saba Samiei is the founder and CEO of MACSO Technologies and Comfort.AI, companies that seek to realise the potential of AI and spread information about AI ethics. Starting at a young age, Samiei has always focused on making artificial intelligence not only accessible but also a part of everyday life.
With MACSO, the goal is to create an AI capable of replicating human senses. Presently, the MACSO AI has been used to create sensors for early detection of respiratory illnesses in livestock. There are multiple projects in the pipeline, with an overarching idea of early detection allowing for preventative measures. Comfort.AI delivers workshops to non-technical audiences to improve their confidence to introduce AI into the business.
Samiei has initiated and led multiple projects throughout her career. She has worked as a transformation director at Westpac NZ, spending time establishing processing and organizing and facilitating ideation sessions and hackathon-style events! With Comfort.AI, Samiei has guided companies in leverage existing AI technology in a strategic and ethical manner. Her interest and passion in AI technology are clear through her participation in a variety of events, and her volunteering at the FLINT Auckland Leadership program with TUANZ. Samiei has been nominated and won several awards and accolades, most recently the NZ Compare Young Professional of the Year award. She actively educates the public about AI, making it “everybody’s comfort zone”.
With MACSO, the goal is to create an AI capable of replicating human senses. Presently, the MACSO AI has been used to create sensors for early detection of respiratory illnesses in livestock. There are multiple projects in the pipeline, with an overarching idea of early detection allowing for preventative measures. Comfort.AI delivers workshops to non-technical audiences to improve their confidence to introduce AI into the business.
Samiei has initiated and led multiple projects throughout her career. She has worked as a transformation director at Westpac NZ, spending time establishing processing and organizing and facilitating ideation sessions and hackathon-style events! With Comfort.AI, Samiei has guided companies in leverage existing AI technology in a strategic and ethical manner. Her interest and passion in AI technology are clear through her participation in a variety of events, and her volunteering at the FLINT Auckland Leadership program with TUANZ. Samiei has been nominated and won several awards and accolades, most recently the NZ Compare Young Professional of the Year award. She actively educates the public about AI, making it “everybody’s comfort zone”.
Desiree Suligan
Tower Insurance
Desiree Suligan is the Automation Capability Lead at Tower Insurance, with a history of working in IT Consultancy and Cloud Development. Suligan currently leads Cloud Solution Design within the Automation team and has a keen understanding of leveraging technology to make efficient systems.
At Tower, Suligan has automated the legacy document distribution system across eight Pacific Island nations. She led a team consisting of technicians and business stakeholders. This change created an efficient system and has saved considerable operational costs. Suligan’s work with cloud computing, serverless framework, and IoT, exemplify her enhanced technical abilities that she continuously shares with her juniors and peers, in a mentoring capacity.
Suligan has also worked with cohorts of interns, in various institutions such as Datacom and Microsoft. Suligan aims to become a solutions architect and create the technical vision for enterprises.
At Tower, Suligan has automated the legacy document distribution system across eight Pacific Island nations. She led a team consisting of technicians and business stakeholders. This change created an efficient system and has saved considerable operational costs. Suligan’s work with cloud computing, serverless framework, and IoT, exemplify her enhanced technical abilities that she continuously shares with her juniors and peers, in a mentoring capacity.
Suligan has also worked with cohorts of interns, in various institutions such as Datacom and Microsoft. Suligan aims to become a solutions architect and create the technical vision for enterprises.
Simon Wilkinson
Jones Family Business
Simon Wilkinson is the Head of IT at The Jones Family Business (JFB). Wilkinson has worked across several industries including the energy, healthcare, and telco sectors. He uses his technical abilities to consolidate and streamline IT services for organisations, and his leadership to direct and assist teams in delivering digital transformation. Wilkinson delivered a transformative technology strategy to The Jones Family Business, enabling the company to become modern, digital and responsive. As a result, every aspect of the business is being steadily digitised. Today, staff enjoy efficient and automated processes, consistent standards, and flexibility that would not be possible without the transformation. Moreover, Wilkinson has enabled JFB access to consumer behaviour data that assists in crucial decision making.
Wilkinson works as an innovator for and a leader to his team and the stakeholders of the business. His goals of assisting companies in creating a digitally enabled New Zealand are steadily realised as he continues to work with organisations and leading teams to become technologically adept.
Wilkinson works as an innovator for and a leader to his team and the stakeholders of the business. His goals of assisting companies in creating a digitally enabled New Zealand are steadily realised as he continues to work with organisations and leading teams to become technologically adept.
Business Transformation through Digital and IT
Business Transformation through Digital and IT
Sponsored by:
Tonkin+Taylor
Tonkin + Taylor (T+T) enacted a large digital transformation, ambitiously leveraging data and technology to build resilience to disruption, while simultaneously building innovative digital solutions to positively disrupt a technologically lagging Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry.
Some of the key technology initiatives within the wider transformational strategy include: establishing a new cloud-based platform, coined Earth Hub, to build foundations for future data innovation; creating an app with built-in logic to capture data in the field and reduce errors; transforming highly technical engineering data into a visual digital interface, and developing an automated cross section generator to shorten manual processes. Additionally, T+T delivered a first-to-market consumer product using a smart algorithm to transform technical natural hazard data into easily understood insights for the everyday consumer.
Collectively, these solutions have not only enabled greater access to complex data and information, enhanced data collection processes and automated arduous manual processes, but has also prompted significant operating model changes within the business, and freed up highly skilled engineers for more value-adding work.
Some of the key technology initiatives within the wider transformational strategy include: establishing a new cloud-based platform, coined Earth Hub, to build foundations for future data innovation; creating an app with built-in logic to capture data in the field and reduce errors; transforming highly technical engineering data into a visual digital interface, and developing an automated cross section generator to shorten manual processes. Additionally, T+T delivered a first-to-market consumer product using a smart algorithm to transform technical natural hazard data into easily understood insights for the everyday consumer.
Collectively, these solutions have not only enabled greater access to complex data and information, enhanced data collection processes and automated arduous manual processes, but has also prompted significant operating model changes within the business, and freed up highly skilled engineers for more value-adding work.
Steel and Tube Holdings Limited
Steel and Tube Holdings Limited
Steel & Tube says it procures and sells the largest range of steel products and solutions in New Zealand with everything from steel materials and fastenings through to roofing and reinforcing steel. The company recognised the opportunity to be an industry first-mover via digital transformation. Starting in 2019 it first transformed its infrastructure and capability, then its customer experience and cybersecurity, and in 2022 is digitally transforming its customer value proposition.
This enabled the company to shift many legacy, paper based processes into digital, automated processes, freeing up employee time to work on higher value interactions with clients. Steel & Tube then launched its Webshop e-commerce platform which it says is New Zealand's leading B2B e-commerce platform that offers full support for the vast range of steel categories it sells.
The key challenge along the way was in how to create the required cultural and mindset shift in an organisation that traditionally had low levels of digital literacy. The business had been, to this point, somewhat of a decentralised model, with different business models in business units, and significant autonomy with the business units. The company built confidence in the use of technology by making it easy to use and demonstrating its value and benefits.
Steel & Tube says the benefits of the transformation have included improved customer satisfaction, increased employee engagement, improved supply chain management, and positive impacts to revenues and costs to serve.
This enabled the company to shift many legacy, paper based processes into digital, automated processes, freeing up employee time to work on higher value interactions with clients. Steel & Tube then launched its Webshop e-commerce platform which it says is New Zealand's leading B2B e-commerce platform that offers full support for the vast range of steel categories it sells.
The key challenge along the way was in how to create the required cultural and mindset shift in an organisation that traditionally had low levels of digital literacy. The business had been, to this point, somewhat of a decentralised model, with different business models in business units, and significant autonomy with the business units. The company built confidence in the use of technology by making it easy to use and demonstrating its value and benefits.
Steel & Tube says the benefits of the transformation have included improved customer satisfaction, increased employee engagement, improved supply chain management, and positive impacts to revenues and costs to serve.
ProCare Network Ltd
ProCare supplies healthcare services to consumers and to healthcare professionals across New Zealand. It has a focus on improving equitable access to healthcare services.
The organisation jointly with Southern Cross created CareHQ, a digital platform where people book virtual healthcare appointments with approved GPs if their primary GP is not available. This reduces delay and reduces the travel burden for patients seeking healthcare. The serviced launched in the early COVID-19 era, and as medical centres became overwhelmed and summer holidays loomed, medical centres took up the service to support their practices.
The company then developed UnifyHealth, a platform enabling high need whanau to access subsidised online consultations leveraging CareHQ. As a patient signs up, UnifyHealth identifies their enrolled consultation cost and applies that to virtual consultations with other GPs that the patient is not enrolled with. This removes a significant barrier to healthcare; additional cost.
ProCare took a co-design approach on both projects, including discovery workshops with a GP focus group, developing and refining user stories. ProCare celebrated its 1,000th telehealth consultancy in July 2022 and says it has improved telehealth engagement by 400% for Māori communities and 1,600% for Pasifika communities. These digital solutions are enabling integrated, and more equitable access to comprehensive primary care teams and community providers.
The organisation jointly with Southern Cross created CareHQ, a digital platform where people book virtual healthcare appointments with approved GPs if their primary GP is not available. This reduces delay and reduces the travel burden for patients seeking healthcare. The serviced launched in the early COVID-19 era, and as medical centres became overwhelmed and summer holidays loomed, medical centres took up the service to support their practices.
The company then developed UnifyHealth, a platform enabling high need whanau to access subsidised online consultations leveraging CareHQ. As a patient signs up, UnifyHealth identifies their enrolled consultation cost and applies that to virtual consultations with other GPs that the patient is not enrolled with. This removes a significant barrier to healthcare; additional cost.
ProCare took a co-design approach on both projects, including discovery workshops with a GP focus group, developing and refining user stories. ProCare celebrated its 1,000th telehealth consultancy in July 2022 and says it has improved telehealth engagement by 400% for Māori communities and 1,600% for Pasifika communities. These digital solutions are enabling integrated, and more equitable access to comprehensive primary care teams and community providers.
Auckland Council
Auckland Council
Recognising the value of real-time data, Auckland Council's ICT innovation team has embraced emerging technology to provide insights for the council and the people of Tāmaki Makaurau. The Auckland Council's long term climate plans are key drivers for this transformation.
With a limited budget, the ICT innovation team developed a low-cost Auckland-wide telemetry network, and real-time data reporting technologies to solve real world issues that lead to reduced costs or let people engage in higher value tasks. For example, its IoT devices monitor stream pollution events, help reduce Kauri dieback, send a ranger out to check full predator traps, and manage water supplies in remote areas.
The positive feedback the team is receiving means the team now has dozens of projects in the pipeline, while also working with community groups to create a bigger change. They say educating communities around what the technology can do in terms of outcomes is key to generating demand. The team looks forward to using data collected for predictive analytics and helping councils, communities and private organizations make better decisions for the environment.
With a limited budget, the ICT innovation team developed a low-cost Auckland-wide telemetry network, and real-time data reporting technologies to solve real world issues that lead to reduced costs or let people engage in higher value tasks. For example, its IoT devices monitor stream pollution events, help reduce Kauri dieback, send a ranger out to check full predator traps, and manage water supplies in remote areas.
The positive feedback the team is receiving means the team now has dozens of projects in the pipeline, while also working with community groups to create a bigger change. They say educating communities around what the technology can do in terms of outcomes is key to generating demand. The team looks forward to using data collected for predictive analytics and helping councils, communities and private organizations make better decisions for the environment.
Community Tech Champions
Community Tech Champions
Sponsored by:
Digital Future Aotearoa
Digital Future Aotearoa
Digital Future Aotearoa (DFA) focuses on ensuring Aotearoa has excellent and equitable life outcomes by enabling our tamariki and rangatahi to experience and fully participate in our digital world. DFA runs and manages resources for several programmes including the well-known Recycle A Device, as well as Code Club and Electric Garden.
DFA's goal is to provide the tools and skills for young people to develop a personal relationship with technology, while learning, sharing ideas, accessing job opportunities and expressing their cultural identity.
A key change in DFA's model was to move from doing it all themselves to finding and enabling people in the community that are already doing similar mahi and support them. Developing these ongoing relationships has helped DFA to become more sustainable for the future. The company partners with a long list of organisations that share its values around bridging the digital divide. Its model and IP is available for others to utilise for anyone that wants to help improve digital equity in Aotearoa.
DFA's goal is to provide the tools and skills for young people to develop a personal relationship with technology, while learning, sharing ideas, accessing job opportunities and expressing their cultural identity.
A key change in DFA's model was to move from doing it all themselves to finding and enabling people in the community that are already doing similar mahi and support them. Developing these ongoing relationships has helped DFA to become more sustainable for the future. The company partners with a long list of organisations that share its values around bridging the digital divide. Its model and IP is available for others to utilise for anyone that wants to help improve digital equity in Aotearoa.
Tōnui Collab Charitable Trust
Tōnui Collab Charitable Trust
Tōnui Collab is a values-led kaupapa-driven charitable trust and specialist bilingual education lab dedicated to creating innovative STEMM (Science, technology, engineering, maths, mātauranga Māori) learning opportunities for tamariki and rangatahi in Tairāwhiti. To date Tōnui Collab has created STEMM learning experiences for over 20,000 young people and counting.
The organisation runs single-day and multi-day wānanga and after school clubs to provide young people with experiences in animation, virtual reality, game development, robotics, graphic design, and more. In the post-COVID era, Tōnui Collab has adopted a mobile strategy taking STEMM learning opportunities into schools, kura, marae, and community spaces, helping to address accessibility barriers.
These experiences help make STEMM career pathways more visible for young people and their whānau. Insights from the past two years of operation have identified the important role whānau play in supporting and influencing rangatahi to pursue STEMM education and Tōnui Collab invites whānau to join in the learning, highlighting to whānau the successes of Māori and Pasifika role models in STEMM, and sharing with whānau the steps rangatahi can take to align their education into a STEMM career.
Tōnui Collab partners with others interested in supporting rangatahi to thrive in STEMM including schools, iwi, Matai Research, and Ministry of Education. Tōnui Collab has a mixed sustainability model including community funding and revenue generating activities.
The organisation runs single-day and multi-day wānanga and after school clubs to provide young people with experiences in animation, virtual reality, game development, robotics, graphic design, and more. In the post-COVID era, Tōnui Collab has adopted a mobile strategy taking STEMM learning opportunities into schools, kura, marae, and community spaces, helping to address accessibility barriers.
These experiences help make STEMM career pathways more visible for young people and their whānau. Insights from the past two years of operation have identified the important role whānau play in supporting and influencing rangatahi to pursue STEMM education and Tōnui Collab invites whānau to join in the learning, highlighting to whānau the successes of Māori and Pasifika role models in STEMM, and sharing with whānau the steps rangatahi can take to align their education into a STEMM career.
Tōnui Collab partners with others interested in supporting rangatahi to thrive in STEMM including schools, iwi, Matai Research, and Ministry of Education. Tōnui Collab has a mixed sustainability model including community funding and revenue generating activities.
Christchurch City Council
Christchurch City Council
Christchurch City Council's 'Esports in Libraries' program aims to improve digital inclusion, open career pathways in tech and gaming, and to bring libraries into the digital era. After hosting their first High School tournament, at Tūranga Library, the council recognised that not everyone had equal access to digital technology, broadband, or applications. Christchurch City council set about creating a program that provides access to esports. The program provides coaching, access to equipment, and free community competitions. Top competitors are also provided the opportunity to train newcomers and are encouraged to attend national competitions.
The program aims to give people of all ages the opportunity to participate in e-sports, including people that may not have had an opportunity to participate in traditional sports. It also seeks to give younger people experiences that may awaken interest in tech or gaming careers. A challenge the council had to overcome was in transforming community beliefs that libraries are 'only about books' and convincing parents about the benefits of gaming. When utilised in a healthy, managed way, Christchurch City Council says positive outcomes are evident in Esports, education and the associated industries.
The program aims to give people of all ages the opportunity to participate in e-sports, including people that may not have had an opportunity to participate in traditional sports. It also seeks to give younger people experiences that may awaken interest in tech or gaming careers. A challenge the council had to overcome was in transforming community beliefs that libraries are 'only about books' and convincing parents about the benefits of gaming. When utilised in a healthy, managed way, Christchurch City Council says positive outcomes are evident in Esports, education and the associated industries.
Best ICT Team Culture & Inclusion
Best ICT Team Culture & Inclusion
Sponsored by:
BNZ
BNZ
The ICT team at Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) makes it crystal clear that customers always come first. The BNZ ICT team strives to provide high quality and efficient banking services to support its customers and strengthen partnerships. BNZ's Technology team’s dedication and a strong focus on providing New Zealanders with digital services that are simple and easy to use, plays a paramount part in company’s delivery on its purpose. BNZ's technology vision is to be the ‘Tech Shop of choice, powering BNZ’s digital future’. To support its digital-first ambition, the team made a strategic decision to merge its Technology and Digital teams together. This change enabled BNZ to deliver the best possible technology solutions for customers and colleagues, in a more effective way. The team became stronger and evolved as a unit, having a clear vision for the future and feeling highly motivated.
Strong team culture allowed the BNZ ICT team to get through challenging times, caused by COVID-19 disruption, together. An initiative called Heartbeat, gives all BNZ employees a chance to submit anonymous feedback and express their feelings about working for the Bank. This initiative helped strengthen team culture, as people feel heard, included, respected, and valued. To support its employees, especially those who joined the team during the pandemic, the Bank kicked off a #TogetherAgain campaign, encouraging all BNZers to reunite and enjoy being together again as a team. Their Tech teams are actively involved in, support and champion, company-wide ‘live chats’ with the Executive and Tech leadership, celebrate ‘Wins of the Week’, proudly wear ‘Tech T-Shirts’, and are all encouraged to acknowledge and engage in in regular diversity and inclusion focused events such as Samoan Language Week, Matariki and Diwali. These initiatives bring the ICT Team at BNZ together in a meaningful, inclusive and authentic way, allowing them to give the best to their customers and the community.
Strong team culture allowed the BNZ ICT team to get through challenging times, caused by COVID-19 disruption, together. An initiative called Heartbeat, gives all BNZ employees a chance to submit anonymous feedback and express their feelings about working for the Bank. This initiative helped strengthen team culture, as people feel heard, included, respected, and valued. To support its employees, especially those who joined the team during the pandemic, the Bank kicked off a #TogetherAgain campaign, encouraging all BNZers to reunite and enjoy being together again as a team. Their Tech teams are actively involved in, support and champion, company-wide ‘live chats’ with the Executive and Tech leadership, celebrate ‘Wins of the Week’, proudly wear ‘Tech T-Shirts’, and are all encouraged to acknowledge and engage in in regular diversity and inclusion focused events such as Samoan Language Week, Matariki and Diwali. These initiatives bring the ICT Team at BNZ together in a meaningful, inclusive and authentic way, allowing them to give the best to their customers and the community.
Southern Cross Health Society
Southern Cross Health Society
Southern Cross Health Society is New Zealand’s largest health insurer and an often indispensable and life-long health and wellbeing partner for its more than 900,000 members. The Southern Cross Digital Platform (DP) team plays an essential role in enabling better outcomes for New Zealanders in an increasingly fragmented and fast-paced health ecosystem. To support its members and deliver sustainable business outcomes, the DP team went through a significant restructuring and digital transformation under Roxanne Salton’s leadership. While this was challenging, the highly motivated DP team went through it all together with a tagline “making a difference together” and became even stronger and more coherent. Its engagement scores of close to 90% speaks for itself. The digital transformation initiative became a tremendous success, as the company recognises that modern technologies play a crucial part in supporting its customer strategy. The new digital technologies enabled the team to deliver customer service internally and externally at the highest standard. In addition, it also improved operational risk and compliance, increased cyber-security, and enabled the creation of sustainable strategic technology and business value.
The Southern Cross DP team acknowledges the importance of diversity, as it reduces blind spots. Its adaptive people leadership emphasises the psychological safety of its people to enable higher performance. And last, but not the least, the DP team at Southern Cross strongly believes that a successful team or a “champion team” is a group of people with different life experience and skill sets, pulling in the same direction all wanting the same result.
The Southern Cross DP team acknowledges the importance of diversity, as it reduces blind spots. Its adaptive people leadership emphasises the psychological safety of its people to enable higher performance. And last, but not the least, the DP team at Southern Cross strongly believes that a successful team or a “champion team” is a group of people with different life experience and skill sets, pulling in the same direction all wanting the same result.
Selwyn District Council
Selwyn District Council
Selwyn Information Services team is responsible for the provision of digital services and solutions for Selwyn Council. This supports the Council’s mission; to deliver the best services ‘from the hills to the sea’ and deliver value to its rate payers. The collaborative approach of the ICT team is a key to Selwyn Council’s successes in delivering on its values and continuously delivering additional services to support the community.
After many challenging years of being under resourced, and "running on empty", with new leadership the ICT team at Selwyn Council came together again, embracing the challenge and stepped up to every opportunity presented. The key was the outstanding team culture embedded in the roots of each and every team member. This included a collective sense of community and genuine care about each other and the people they work for, internally and externally. Together, the team has elevated its customer services through significant investments in process improvement, new technologies, and elevating relationships with its vendors, growing them into strong partnerships. The ability to work together, easily form different teams in response to project needs, customers, and its own continuous internal development, is what creates an environment where great things happen. The team's philosophy is: “win, win, win - where the technology is an enabler meaning we win, our business wins, and our citizens win”. It is definitely a strong foundation for success.
To support each other and further strengthening the team culture, the team came up with a number of initiatives, including a series of “Learning Lunches”, “Keep Connected” and others. In addition, the ICT team at Selwyn Council values different cultures and origins, celebrating differences, perspectives and additional value they offer.
After many challenging years of being under resourced, and "running on empty", with new leadership the ICT team at Selwyn Council came together again, embracing the challenge and stepped up to every opportunity presented. The key was the outstanding team culture embedded in the roots of each and every team member. This included a collective sense of community and genuine care about each other and the people they work for, internally and externally. Together, the team has elevated its customer services through significant investments in process improvement, new technologies, and elevating relationships with its vendors, growing them into strong partnerships. The ability to work together, easily form different teams in response to project needs, customers, and its own continuous internal development, is what creates an environment where great things happen. The team's philosophy is: “win, win, win - where the technology is an enabler meaning we win, our business wins, and our citizens win”. It is definitely a strong foundation for success.
To support each other and further strengthening the team culture, the team came up with a number of initiatives, including a series of “Learning Lunches”, “Keep Connected” and others. In addition, the ICT team at Selwyn Council values different cultures and origins, celebrating differences, perspectives and additional value they offer.
Foodstuffs North Island
Foodstuffs North Island
While operating in one of New Zealand’s most dynamic, essential, and high-profile sectors, the ICT team at Foodstuffs North Island has a massive day-to-day task to keep all major food stores running in store, online and through supply chain. This enormous task is only possible for a highly connected, unified team, says Foodstuffs.
Foodstuffs' ICT team aspiration is to become one of the world’s most customer-driven retailers by 2030. To get there, the team is delivering the right tools, capabilities, and culture, enabling them to use customer insights to drive all their retail actions. Foodstuffs North Island says technology undeniably drives value and innovation to provide better shopping experience to their customers.
The ICT team acknowledges the paramount importance of building a culture of recognition and inclusion and continuously creating opportunities to recognise a job well done whether it be big or small. They say, “great things happen every single day across IT”, so the team produced multiple mechanisms to celebrate their colleagues, including “Celebrate IT”, “IT@Foodies” and “Everyday Thanks”. Additionally, through many years of serving to its customers, the ICT team at Foodstuffs proved that cross functional team collaboration enables faster innovation, helps to identify mistakes faster and enables better solutions that attain higher productivity.
Foodstuffs' ICT team aspiration is to become one of the world’s most customer-driven retailers by 2030. To get there, the team is delivering the right tools, capabilities, and culture, enabling them to use customer insights to drive all their retail actions. Foodstuffs North Island says technology undeniably drives value and innovation to provide better shopping experience to their customers.
The ICT team acknowledges the paramount importance of building a culture of recognition and inclusion and continuously creating opportunities to recognise a job well done whether it be big or small. They say, “great things happen every single day across IT”, so the team produced multiple mechanisms to celebrate their colleagues, including “Celebrate IT”, “IT@Foodies” and “Everyday Thanks”. Additionally, through many years of serving to its customers, the ICT team at Foodstuffs proved that cross functional team collaboration enables faster innovation, helps to identify mistakes faster and enables better solutions that attain higher productivity.
Sustainability Through Technology
Sustainability Through Technology
Sponsored by:
Computer Recycling Ltd
Computer Recycling Ltd
An electronic waste recycling and disposal centre in the heart of Auckland, Computer Recycling Ltd. specialises in the reuse and recycling of “anything with a plug”, particularly IT equipment. The company first seeks to recycle complete items for reuse. Where it can't do that it has implemented cutting edge technology to break down items and recycle components, for items otherwise destined for landfill.
In 2021, the company launched its BLUBOX project in partnership with the Ministry of the Environment’s Waste Minimisation Fund. The BLUBOX shredder and an MSS optical sorter helps Computer Recycling process previously un-recyclable e-waste, diverting millions of tons away from the landfills.
Computer Recycling has brought state of the art technology to New Zealand, and is promoting awareness around e-waste recycling to improve New Zealand's e-waste recycling rates.
In 2021, the company launched its BLUBOX project in partnership with the Ministry of the Environment’s Waste Minimisation Fund. The BLUBOX shredder and an MSS optical sorter helps Computer Recycling process previously un-recyclable e-waste, diverting millions of tons away from the landfills.
Computer Recycling has brought state of the art technology to New Zealand, and is promoting awareness around e-waste recycling to improve New Zealand's e-waste recycling rates.
Christchurch City Council
Christchurch City Council
The Council has set a district-wide target to halve Christchurch’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (from their financial year 2016/17 baseline) and achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. To measure its progress towards these goals, the Council built an online monthly emissions and transportation mode tracker.
The greenhouse gas emission tracker is a transparent and data driven tool for the community to visualise how the district is tracking across different greenhouse gas emission sources as well as displaying general transport trends. The tracker displays transportation modes, including fossil fuelled vehicles, cycling, bus patronage, and battery electric vehicle numbers. With multiple disparate data sources, the Council developed several solutions to automatically collect, store, convert, and display the data. The tracker accounts for around 52.6% of the district’s total gross emissions with further project phases planned to add more data sources to the tracker.
This new tracker is available online for organisations and citizens to view. Christchurch City Council says other Councils could use the tracker blueprint to create their own tracker as a tool for their district.
The greenhouse gas emission tracker is a transparent and data driven tool for the community to visualise how the district is tracking across different greenhouse gas emission sources as well as displaying general transport trends. The tracker displays transportation modes, including fossil fuelled vehicles, cycling, bus patronage, and battery electric vehicle numbers. With multiple disparate data sources, the Council developed several solutions to automatically collect, store, convert, and display the data. The tracker accounts for around 52.6% of the district’s total gross emissions with further project phases planned to add more data sources to the tracker.
This new tracker is available online for organisations and citizens to view. Christchurch City Council says other Councils could use the tracker blueprint to create their own tracker as a tool for their district.
Auckland Council
Auckland Council
Auckland Council
The ICT Innovation team at Auckland Council is a small team supporting the Auckland region. Its mission is to develop innovative IoT solutions that provide data-driven sustainability outcomes in the Auckland region. With little budget available, the small team took a design thinking approach. This let them be innovative and flexible in delivery and capability, but also low-cost and effective with experimental solutions.
The team has a range of solutions already live in place including monitoring stream pollution levels, helping reduce Kauri dieback, and predator trap activation notifications. They experiment to find the right device endpoints for real world situations, use a variety of network connectivity options, have a self-healing network, and much of the code is open source.
The positive feedback the team is receiving means the team now has dozens of projects in the pipeline, while also working with community groups to create a bigger change. They say educating communities around what the technology can do in terms of outcomes is key to generating demand. The team looks forward to using data collected for predictive analytics and helping councils, communities and private organizations make better decisions for the environment.
The team has a range of solutions already live in place including monitoring stream pollution levels, helping reduce Kauri dieback, and predator trap activation notifications. They experiment to find the right device endpoints for real world situations, use a variety of network connectivity options, have a self-healing network, and much of the code is open source.
The positive feedback the team is receiving means the team now has dozens of projects in the pipeline, while also working with community groups to create a bigger change. They say educating communities around what the technology can do in terms of outcomes is key to generating demand. The team looks forward to using data collected for predictive analytics and helping councils, communities and private organizations make better decisions for the environment.
Outstanding Contribution to Technology and Business in New Zealand
Outstanding Contribution to Technology and Business in New Zealand
Sponsored by:
The recipient is selected by the judging panel and will be announced at the ceremony on 14 March.
