Presentations
Trends in Information and Communication Technologies
At the May 2009 State Services Commission's ICT Futures Group meeting, Dr Helen Anderson gave a presentation on the Futurewatch methodology. Dr Anderson discussed how the methodology could be applied to ICT developments in the public sector, to aid decision making on technologies to enhance New Zealanders' experience as part of a modern participatory democracy.
The Future of Robotic Surgery
The Futurewatch programme sponsored a visit to New Zealand by Dr Catherine Mohr, as a guest speaker at the 2009 MoRGO conference. Dr Mohr is an expatriate New Zealander who works in San Francisco as the Director of Medical Research at Intuitive Surgical Inc, where she is involved in the development of surgical robots. An edited version of one of her talks (without the embedded video clips) is available.
During her visit MoRST interviewed Dr Mohr about her work, her views of New Zealand innovation and the rewards she gets from her role. The short video can be viewed on our website.
MindLab - Innovation in the Public Sector
In December 2009 MoRST's Futurewatch programme hosted, on behalf of the Futures Forum (a state sector community of interest), Christian Bason, the Director of Denmark's MindLab. MindLab is a cross-ministerial unit that is a testing ground for involving citizens and businesses in finding solutions for the public sector.
Christian's talk was about unleashing the inner anthropologist in policy analysts, to get them to better understand what citizens and businesses want from the public sector and identify what is likely to meet their needs. While these concepts aren't necessarily new to our state sector, MindLab demonstrates a way for government agencies to be able to work across organisations and to test different approaches. A PDF copy of his presentation can be downloaded here.
Christian was brought to New Zealand by the New Zealand Centre for Social Innovation.