A night at Techweek on New Zealand’s DPI and Silverstripe’s role

Last Tuesday at Parliament, I had the chance to hear Hon Judith Collins speak at the main Techweek event with AWS — Foundations for Tomorrow: Reimagining New Zealand’s Digital Public Infrastructure. It was refreshing to hear her perspective. The event brought together people from government and tech to talk about how digital public infrastructure (DPI) can help make online public services easier to access for everyone in Aotearoa.

The evening started with relaxed networking and a few drinks, giving everyone a chance to connect before heading into the beautiful old General Assembly room. It was my first time inside the Beehive — and definitely my first time in that stunning space.

Graeme Muller, CEO of NZTech, stepped in as MC. Right from the start, his energy and enthusiasm brought great momentum to the evening.

The event kicked off with a keynote from Hon Judith Collins, Minister for Digitising Government. She shared her vision for the future of New Zealand’s digital public infrastructure, setting the tone for the evening with bold, forward-looking ideas that sparked real energy in the room. 

After the Minister’s speech, we watched a powerful case study from Sri Lanka(opens in new tab) — a clear example of how AWS-powered digital public infrastructure helped the country tackle a fuel crisis with smart, fast, and tech-driven solutions.

Following the video, Graeme invited the impressive panel onto the stage. The group included:

• Adithi Pandit - Partner at Deloitte New Zealand
• Sir Brian Roche - New Zealand’s Public Service Commissioner
• Rod Drury - Founder of Xero
• Pete Herlihy - Global Lead - Digital Public Infrastructure at AWS
• Emma Dobson - Global expert in data standardisation

It was a privilege to hear diverse perspectives from both the private and public sectors during the panel discussion. It was really pleasing to hear the shared passion and urgency to get things underway quickly; Rod in particular threw the challenge to the room that global and Kiwi businesses can work together with the government to deliver government services online to New Zealanders by Christmas. 

The team at Techweek has already put together a great recap blog post(opens in new tab), so I won’t dive into all the details here.

The event wrapped up with a video that I’m especially proud of — we produced it in just a couple of weeks, working closely with my team at Silverstripe and the talented crew at StudioC Design.

The two-and-a-half-minute video highlights the challenges New Zealand faces in delivering government services, and how Silverstripe — along with other leading Kiwi companies — is partnering with AWS to make those services easier to access. It also shows how this work opens up opportunities for New Zealand to support governments around the world.

Watch the video below to see what we’ve been working on over the past six months to support Collins’ vision.