“New Zealand’s local technology expertise is world-class and capable of securing our most critical technology systems at home,” says Don Christie, Managing Director and co-founder of Catalyst.
“In an era where digital sovereignty and economic resilience are inseparable, our default Government procurement model should change. We should look to local experts first, and prioritise providers who utilise open source and open standards platforms.”
As part of Budget 2026 the government announced considerable investment to deliver modern technology for the emergency management sector, and $153.6 million in funding to increase cyber security investment to better protect patient information over the next four years.
While Mr Christie welcomes technology renewal, he warns that government procurement must prioritise New Zealand expertise and capability over global proprietary solutions to avoid locking the nation into a new era of vendor dependency and an unorganised tangle of outdated software systems.
“The government is blocking local innovation by locking itself into offshore tech giants. Currently, this over-reliance on foreign proprietary systems lacks competition, meaning our most powerful fix is to reform how we buy technology.”
Globally, countries such as the United Kingdom, Denmark and France are adopting open standards in procurement to support technology innovation.
“New Zealand should look to open source and open standards becoming the default for government procurement technology,” Mr Christie says.
Open source refers to software whose source code is freely available for anyone to use, modify and share, such as the Linux operating system, which is developed by a collaborative global community.
Open standards are publicly available guidelines that ensure interoperability between different technologies. On the other hand, proprietary solutions are closed, privately owned software platforms (often managed by offshore tech giants) where the underlying code is kept secret. The customer must pay ongoing licensing fees to use it but is legally locked into that single vendor's roadmap and pricing for upgrades.
Christie argues that these new public systems are too critical to our national functions to outsource to a single global tech giant.
“These latest technology initiatives, which will be critical to how our country functions during crises, present a vital opportunity. By choosing open standards, the Government can secure our digital infrastructure, build genuine local capability, and ensure public spending directly stimulates the New Zealand technology economy.”
ENDS