The Digital Strategy

The New Zealand government’s proposed DRM and trusted computing policies have been brought to world-wide attention this week. The NZ government website states:

“Trusted computing and digital rights management are complementary technologies that are beginning to be deployed internationally. They are expected to become commonplace. Although they may offer benefits, they will also introduce potential risks to the integrity of government-held information. In 2006, a New Zealand government working group, established under the E-government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF), developed principles and policies regarding government use of these technologies to mitigate the risks. Government-wide principles and policies will ensure a common approach, and reduce the prospect of inconsistencies and interoperability issues.”

Too much information? Too many big words?

This DRM and trusted computing business is all part of New Zealand’s digital strategy. As that website says, the digital strategy is:

“…a strategy for ensuring New Zealand is a world leader in using information and technology to realise our economic, environmental, social and cultural goals. The Digital Strategy isn’t just about technology … it’s about people and their ability to connect to the things that matter to them.”

The digital strategy is the way that our government belives that we are going to be able to move from being a twentieth century agricultural economy to a twenty-first century ‘knowledge economy. It’s all about getting back up the OECD rankings.

They say that, “agreeing on a common set of principles and policies that reflect their requirements, governments can more effectively influence ICT product vendors to develop standards and features that will meet these requirements“? So, the NZ government are planning on setting up systems that will be used by other goverments around the world.

Does this matter?

Of course it does. DRM (digital rights management) is a lot more than the technology that stops you ripping a DVD or sharing your downloaded music with your mates. This could be expanded to the way that things are done or the way that information and ideas are accessd. Potentially this could mean that we Kiwis woiuld be unable to look at a government website unless we used a web browser of their choice. Given the choices would that be a web browser developed under open souce (Firefox) or one developed by Microsoft or Apple?

And what about our part in this as educationalists? We need to do some reading and do some thinking and talking. We are part and parcel of delivering the government’s digital strategy. Think about it.

I wish that I could claim some orignal thought about all of this. Sadly I can’t. In fact I am also saddened by the fact that I didn’t find out about this by reading our local media. I discovered this through BoingBoing.net.

“Cory Doctorow, of the University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy and a contributor to the high-profile technology weblog boingboing, wrote yesterday that the guidelines make no mention of what he calls “the disastrous impact of DRM on open source”, despite the government’s official policy of encouraging open source.” ZDNet, Australia

The first ZDnet post (Rob O’Neill)

Cory Doctorow’s first post

ZDnet’s second post (Rob O’Neill)

Cory’s second post

Related posts:

1. Digital Content Strategy
2. Format Shifting
3. Just Browsing Thanks