Our year
Community
Our community programme works to further our mission of promoting the Internet’s benefits and uses and protecting its potential. We do this by providing funding and community engagement opportunities.
We support New Zealanders who can shape the Internet’s growth, development and use – including people from business, government, academia, technical and community-based organisations and the general public.
Our community programme includes funding of $700,000 in the past year going to community organisations and individuals through grants and strategic partnership funding. The programme also includes a range of community engagement work including events like NetHui, speaker series and the NZ Internet Research Forum. We also sponsor events and awards and provide other in-kind support to community organisations.
We plan to help New Zealanders be well developed, connected, collaborating and contributing as much as they can to the development of the Internet for our country.
Our community programme
$700,000
Including funding for community grants
$500,000Funding
Annually we have approximately $500,000 available for community grants. See what work our grants have funded at the link below.
InternetNZ judges funding applications based on the information provided and a standard due diligence process. We do not exercise any editorial or other after-the-fact judgment over the outcome of any research, project or conference presentation. Information provided is the responsibility of the author or project owner.
You can see what InternetNZ has funded on our website.
Partnerships
We continued with our slate of excellent Strategic Partners. Our Strategic Partnerships are how we enshrine long lasting relationships with organisations that we share values, goals and objectives with. In the last financial year, these partners have been:
We also provide in-kind support to a number of organisations that work in areas that are related to what we do, including TUANZ, NZITF, NZNOG and the Ipv6 Taskforce.
Events
We host many Internet-related events throughout the year:
NetHui brings the community together to discuss all things Internet-related.
Speaker Series discusses important issues for Internet users in New Zealand.
New Zealand Internet Research Forum (NZIRF) brings together people from a range of sectors involved with or interested in Internet research.
Below features some of the Internet related events we have hosted.
We have a code of conduct that we ask all attendees to adhere to at InternetNZ events. You can view this here.
InternetNZ has helped bring the NetHui experience to New Zealanders interested in the future of the Internet since 2011
1. NetHui
InternetNZ has helped bring the NetHui experience to New Zealanders interested in the future of the Internet since 2011 – they have been held in cities, towns and at your house via live streaming.
A NetHui is about discussions, not presentations – participants set topics and lead conversations amongst all of the attendees. While there are plenary sessions with keynote speakers to bring participants together at the beginning and end of each day, most of a NetHui is given over to breakout sessions, often with multiple sessions running concurrently. This format deliberately creates smaller groups, so more voices have the opportunity to be heard and participate.
A NetHui feels very different from most events. The collaborative conversations between participants draw often overlooked views and expertise. People share their own experiences as well as their knowledge, so it is rare for a NetHui session to end without everyone feeling like there was the opportunity to learn something new – even if they were experts in the topic when the session started.
NetHui 2017
NetHui 2017 took place on 9-10 November at the Aotea Centre in Auckland. 450 people gathered in Auckland to explore the theme of ‘Trust and Freedom on the Internet’ at the 2017 NetHui event.
You can view the content from this event on the NetHui website here.
NetHui in 2018
We also held a special NetHui in 2018. NetHui Copyright which took place on 12 March 2018 at Te Papa in Wellington and focused solely on copyright issues. Videos from the keynote, discussion sessions, and closing panel are available on website here.
There will be more NetHui events in 2018 however these will happen later in the year.
2. Speaker Series
InternetNZ has helped bring the NetHui experience to New Zealanders interested in the future of the Internet since 2011 – they have been held in cities, towns and at your house via live streaming.
InternetNZ Speaker Series events are about exploring topical issues for the Internet community in New Zealand. For each of the events below, click on the links to see the recording of the live streaming of the event.
Democracy and the Internet
Read MoreFood and the Internet
Read MorePrivacy and the Internet
Read More3. New Zealand Internet Research Forum (NZIRF)
The NZIRF is organised by InternetNZ in collaboration with the research community. The forum brings together people from a range of sectors involved with or interested in Internet research. Attendees share perspectives, discuss potential collaborations and most importantly help build a research network community that benefits New Zealanders.
The 2017 NZIRF was held the day before NetHui on 8 November in the same location in Auckland. 102 people registered for the event.
Issues
The issues team gained a new member as we welcomed Nicola Brown to InternetNZ. Nicola works on projects that support a better Internet across our focus areas of access, trust and creative potential.
The issues team worked on a number of projects across our three focus areas. They also responded to policy decisions coming from the Government and wider international tech issues with opinions and advice to better the Internet for New Zealanders.
Access
Digital divides map
We teamed up with our strategic partner 20/20 Trust to build an interactive map of New Zealand that shows the divides across the country for Internet access, use, skill and social deprivation.
This is the first tool that shines light on the digital divides in New Zealand, allows you to see the different types of digital divides that affect our communities and enables you to find information about what support is out there in communities to address digital divides.
The map was launched in September 2017 and can be found at digitaldivide.nz
Telecommunications Act Review
InternetNZ supports better Internet access for all New Zealanders, meaning further coverage and faster services at fair prices. Through the Telecommunications Act Review, the Government is designing the future framework for regulating telecommunications services in New Zealand. We keep a close eye on this process to support our vision for better Internet and to represent the interests and concerns of the New Zealand Internet users.
Our latest submission went to the Government in February 2018. Overall, we strongly support the Government’s framework and want it to become law. We do however see some opportunities to define some elements of the Bill and these recommendations are stated in our submission. More information about this submission, and past submissions regarding the Act here.
Trust
Two factor authentication
In February 2018 we released a series of resources to help New Zealanders understand why using two factor authentication is so important – and step by step instructions on how to set it up. Our message – turning on 2FA protects your accounts by adding a second step to log in. It’s easy for you to use, but makes it hard for anyone else to use your identity or get your data. We wanted to produce material that made a real difference to Kiwis – by helping them be secure online.
We produced a video and infographics and spread the word via social media.
You can check out the resources here
Use
Copyright
As the key law saying how New Zealanders can use, access, and share information, copyright has big effects on the ways we use and benefit from the Internet. That’s why we wrote a position paper titled ‘Getting copyright right in the information age,’ which we released in February 2018. It highlights key issues where our current copyright law may not fully enable the benefits of the Internet like cloud computing, text-and-data-mining, and online platforms where New Zealanders express themselves.
You can read more about our copyright – including this paper – here.
Analog regulation, digital world
Launched during Nethui 2017, James Ting-Edwards from the Issues team co-authored a report with Eric Crampton from the New Zealand Initiative titled ‘Analog Regulation, Digital World.’ The report looks at the ongoing regulatory challenge of keeping up with the pace of technological change, and examines areas where New Zealand is doing well, and those where we can do better.
You can view the report here.
Optimistic futures
In February 2018, InternetNZ partnered with Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Government and the Department of Internal Affairs’ Service Innovation Lab. We jointly hosted a free half day event between the Digital Nations conference and the government-only Digital Five Ministerial Summit in Wellington.
For more information visit optimisticfutures.nz
International
ICANN and the Domain Name System
The Domain Name System (DNS) is coordinated at the global level by an organisation called ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN brings together people and organisations interested in the DNS to make global policies that have an impact on the generic Top Level Domains (think names ending in .com). These policies might have a future impact on how we operate .nz for New Zealand.
Registries that run domains, registrars that sell them to the public, businesses that use the Internet, civil society activists and government officials all get together at ICANN’s meetings, which move around the world three times a year. Besides shaping policy, it’s the best chance to meet with other organisations, that like us, run ccTLDs (country code top level domains). We find out how they are developing and we share best practice with each other.
In the past year, we have continued to ensure that the New Zealand perspective is included in these debates, and made our contribution to running the global Internet,
through our attendance at:
ICANN61
San Juan
(10-15 March 2018)
ICANN60
Abu Dhabi
(28 October - 3 November 2017)
ICANN59
Johannesburg
(26-29 June 2017)
In addition to this, our staff and appointees sit on many committees and reference groups that work with the international Internet community to support the work of these organisations.
Internet governance
As well as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), there are a few other processes we keep an eye on:
The International Telecommunications Union or ITU is a very old United Nations body that has survived into the Internet age. Some countries do not support the “multi-stakeholder” leadership of Internet policy represented by groups like ICANN and the Internet Governance Forum, and would like to control the Internet’s development through government-only institutions. We follow discussion at the ITU and argue that it should stick within its area of expertise, and not expand its scope.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has an active Internet policy discussion through one of its committees. We try and keep across that work, though we do not participate very actively.
While our international commitment represents a small part of what we do, it is important. No country is on its own in the global Internet. We have a responsibility as a respected participant to help shape an Internet that can build the better world we stand for as an organisation.
The Internet Governance Forum
The Internet Governance Forum is a United Nations sponsored event that has happened every year since 2005. We send staff to this to experience the world-wide debates about all things Internet related (almost every topic under the sun is there), and to share what we learn at NetHui with a broader audience. There are spin off regional and national Internet Governance Forums which we try to get along to as well - the Australia and Pacific versions first among them.