Communities making the most of ICT

"Communities form around people who share a locality, interest or identity. The common bond may be a suburb or city, ethnicity or religion, sport or profession."

ICT can be a powerful tool for community groups, what ever form they take. ICT can connect us with each other and help us to share our common interests. Communities need access to relevant content, need to have the skills and ailities to make the most of the ICT opportunities and also they need access to the appropriate connection tools to make it all happen.

www.community.net.nz is a resource for NZ community groups and provides guides, news and tools for and by clubs, groups, charities, trusts, hapu & iwi.

All communities are different and communities themselves are best placed to determine their own needs, and in partnership with local government and other organisations they can strive towards their goals. The government recognises the vital role that community, voluntary, and Māori organisations and iwi play in New Zealand society. An independent and vibrant community sector is essential to a healthy civil society. Government and the community sector depend on each other to achieve shared goals of social participation, social equity, and strengthened communities.

The Digital Strategy focuses on a grass-roots approach to providing and helping to develop services with the concept of partnership being key. To be effective, initiatives must come from communities themselves. Government can help to provide communities with the tools they need and also help to share good ideas with others throughout New Zealand. The first round of the Community Partnership Fund showed just how well this can work.

In the Digital Strategy we set out a goal to help Communities make the most from ICT:

Goal: To enable communities to use technology to achieve their social, cultural, and economic aspirations.

You can access the Communities section of the Digital Strategy publication here
æ Communities Section

Action

The Government is currently developing a range of inter-related initiatives that are contributing to the Communities goal of the Digital Strategy. These initiatives work closely with the developments in the other areas of the Digital Strategy.

Government is only one player in this area and many community groups, business sponsors, iwi, local government organisations and indeed many individual New Zealanders are making huge leaps and bounds in enhancing the benefits community groups get out of ICT.

For some examples visit the links below:

æ Support for Communities
æ ICT and Māori
æ ICT and Pacific Communities

To find out more about some of the intiaitives that the Government is working on visit the
æ Community Actions section