Proposal for a Joint D5 Policy Research and Development Unit

Natalia Pritchard recently set up a NZGovTech Meetup to collect ideas from New Zealanders for projects that the D5 countries could work on together.  At the meetup, people were invited to pitch their ideas, with the best ones being selected for further development.

Along with Natalia and Michael Thornton, I proposed that the D5 set up a joint policy research and development unit so that new areas of technology could have harmonised policy between the D5 countries, citing the example of cryptocurrencies as an obvious area for policy R&D.

It would neatly solve a couple of problems: First, it’s expensive for small countries to develop policy from scratch over an increasingly large space of rapidly changing technologies. Second, having harmonised policies would make it easier, less expensive and less risky to do business across borders. As a byproduct, it would result in the excellent D5 principles being spread more widely.

Here’s a little video explaining how it would work: