Public interest hardly considered in murky Government gifting of NZ Live to Eventfinder.
In 2006 the Ministry of Culture and Heritage launched, with great fanfare, an events website called NZ Live. The new venture was backed by millions of dollars of government funding.
At the time a privately owned website operator, Eventfinder, openly attacked the Ministry by declaring it an unnecessary duplication of their service and that the government had no place in spending huge resources in competition to a privately run site, like Eventfinder. Their campaign against NZ Live was scathing of the Ministry, even extending to their setting up a website soapbox, whynzlive.com.
On 9 March 2010, an agreement was signed between the Ministry of Culture and Heritage and Eventfinder, which effectively and freely handed Eventfinder the most valuable assets of NZ Live’s multi-million dollar development. It also involves some ongoing human resources support from the Ministry. This gifting of valuable public property was made following private discussions between the Ministry and Eventfinder, with no discussions entered into with other event website providers; that is until one meeting occurred with industry representatives only days before the agreement signing.
The Ministry apparently believes its agreement preserves the intent of NZ Live, whilst addressing a need to cut costs. We say that it is a seriously ill-considered deal that has the potential to destroy many privately operated website businesses and sets intolerably bad precedents for the government’s role in internet provisioning. While we agree that it is good public policy to organise the gathering of event information through one community portal, so that the ‘collective’ portal also distributes that information, it is certainly not in the public interest to effectively hand that control to one private provider.
Eventfinder’s original assertion that the government misused tax-payer money to create unfair competition is now finally realised. Of course, Eventfinder is silent on the subject now that they are the beneficiaries of it.
Why this agreement is bad policy and not in the public interest
The internet is widely regarded as the infrastructure tool of the coming age. The freedoms and opportunities it has created are unprecedented for all people, and not just for big businesses with money to out-bid ordinary citizens, or governments deciding who can benefit and who can’t.
This is the reason why the internet is causing a revolution in enabling people-to-help-people. It has been possible for individuals and small enterprises, with little money but a big idea, to set up websites that create enormous benefit for our communities. Often the motivation for small web developers is simply to create and deliver something of value and to merely generate enough money to continue a free public service.
This is certainly the case for a host of privately operated event information websites in New Zealand. Many, like Wotzon.com and Mukuna.co.nz, have successfully built websites and processes out of their own pockets, with no community funding, and worked for many years to build open relationships with event patrons and promoters so that a great service is freely available.
Against this backdrop of freedom and open largess steps the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. Its NZ Live website was developed with the backing of the previous government and some millions of dollars of our money for development and operation.
Now, through a process of private discussions, the government has freely gifted the most valuable assets of tax-payer funded development to one private company. The feed of content to NZ Live is now directed to Eventfinder.co.nz, where event promoters are obliged to sign up to Eventfinder’s membership database, and the accumulated search engine traffic of NZ Live is redirected to Eventfinder. And whilst the negotiators of the agreement at the Ministry of Culture and Heritage make much of the fact that Eventfinder is bound to provide the public and other sites the ability to pick up a feed of content for free, via an API (Application Program Interface), the terms and conditions of the free Eventfinder API require linking to, and promotion of Eventfinder.
This is of course normal for the provision of a free API, only in this case the data behind the API is being maintained in part by public servants. It is also worth noting that Eventfinder is already in the business of selling these feeds commercially.
Some websites will not wish to operate under Eventfinder’s terms and ultimate control. And anyone who wishes to build a commercial service around a feed should note that Eventfinder has under its agreement with the government the ability to terminate its agreement with the Ministry and start charging for these feeds with three months notice.
All this was apparently done on the basis that Eventfinder had some technical capabilities that could enable the continuation of NZ Live type services. However, the process did not at any time canvas other website operators and it clearly hasn’t considered the implications for many private websites who are forced to operate in an environment that is increasingly monopolized by one government backed operator.
Of greatest concern is that the deal represents poor public policy thinking. It sets a bad precedent for our government, in a world that increasingly understands that the internet is less about power-and-control, and more about open communities of mutual interest. A much better solution could have been possible if looked at from the perspective of public good. After all some great examples are all around us, built on years of hard work and planning by a host of large and small players.
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