Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Phillip Duncan: WeatherWatch Head Analyst on the merger between NIWA and MetService

Transcript

Phillip Duncan: WeatherWatch Head Analyst on the merger between NIWA and MetService · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The governments announced legislation to merge Niwa a met service
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: and will be introduced later this year. It's all to
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: save money and to streamline our weather forecasting service. The
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Minister of for State Owned Enterprises, Simeon Brown, says that
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: it makes absolutely no sense to have two separate entities,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: no kidding. Philip Duncan is the head analyst at weather
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Watch New Zealand, and he joins me, now, good morning
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: to here.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Philip, Good morning Andrew.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: You're the head analyst, or the only analyst.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Pretty much only at these days.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Very good okay. Who is better Niwa or met service
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: and who should actually take.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Charge met service? They're the ones that are tasked to
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  Speaker 2: do the job that we tax fund them to do,
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: and they've got a fairly strong reputation. I know that
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: they've had times over the years where they've got things
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: wrong like we all have, but they're the ones that
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: have pretty much got the infrastructure, and not just that,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: but the mindset of understanding how to communicate and use
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: the right words at the right time, something that is
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: definitely missing from newa who use quite a stream words
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: quite frequently and find themselves looking a bit silly after
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: the event doesn't come through.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you would agree the merger is the best outcome.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: And I think the thing that you would love the
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: most about it is open data sharing. Tell me about that.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, if you had open data, we wouldn't be in
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: this problem in the first place, because what would have
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: happened is fifteen years ago. And by the way, it's
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: fantastic to hear the government finally saying what we've been
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: telling them for nearly fifteen years now, and some of
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: them really denied that this was happening. So it's good
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: to see that saying the right words. That's fantastic. But
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: you know, the infrastructure that NIWA has got with their
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: quote unquote supercomputer, which is just a large computer they've got,
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: but that computing power mixed with mat services, rain radar
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: would have produced some really fantastic products from the government itself.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: But because the government is really bad at sharing stuff
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: from department to department. So I'll give you a good example,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: many many people in New Zealand volunteered their time to
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: give up where the data, to write it down on
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: little books and seed that into neeware. For many many
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: years now. NEEWA believes that that data that was given
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: by volunteers is their intellectual property and they own it,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: so they don't share it with anyone then, and you've
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: got met Service on the other side saying the same
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: thing about the rain radar that we all tax funded
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: for them, the public and if they just shared that stuff,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: you wouldn't need and MEE were competing against met Service,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: that would never have evolved. Instead, what would have evolved
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: is the New Zealand government having some really amazing products.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Open data would fix that and put us online with
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: the rest of the modern world.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: So basically you're saying a merger will save costs and
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: also come up with better forecasts, and that's all good.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The only worry I've got is that with this merger,
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: if it's still the same knee, we're management running whatever
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: else they spin out, and then it's just smoke and
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: mirrors and nothing's really been done other than save a
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: few dollars. The public haven't gained anything from that. So
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: I hope that they structure us with a brand fresh
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: new space and management, and also one that's open and transparent,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: which NIWA definitely has not been. To media outlets and
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: to ministers as well. They've been quite dishonest.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time today, Philip.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 3:09
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• 3:12
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