Jim Higgins - Chairman

Jim Higgins chairs the expert advisory board. Jim has thirty six years experience in the computing and telecommunications industry. He has worked in the local and central government sectors during which time he gained an in-depth insight into a wide spectrum of government information systems and policy development. He worked with the Office of the Auditor General developing IT Audit and Risk Management methodologies, and in 1992 he was appointed Director of a new public and private sector initiative; The World Communications Laboratory. This initiative was New Zealand's equivalent of the US Information Superhighway project. The objective of this initiative was to implement high-bandwidth telecommunications and was highly successful in kick-starting the spread of the Internet in NZ.

Over the last twelve years Jim has presented close to a thousand seminars, workshops, training sessions, radio broadcasts and television appearances as well as authoring one of the first NZ books on use of the Internet for business. His interest in promoting technology use in NZ has resulted in personal involvement in a wide range of IT associations, Industry Boards and Committees. He has merited a number of honours, among which are the Communicator of the Year Award from the NZ Speech Board, and in November 2000 an award by the NZ Computer Society for the most outstanding contribution towards public sector computing in the last century.