Greetings to those who have stumbled across In Development. The purpose of this post is simple: to introduce myself and mention briefly what I’ll be blogging about.
I’m Richard Best and one of 5 lawyers working at the State Services Commission (SSC). My specific title is Legal Advisor to the All-of-government Authentication Programme. While the bulk of the advice I provide is to that Programme, I’m also pulled into other areas of SSC’s wider Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Branch (of which the Authentication Programme is a subset) as and when required. That Branch is really the heart of e-government in New Zealand and is regularly pulsing with some pretty exciting projects and, flowing from that, interesting and sometimes fairly novel legal issues. I feel fortunate to be working alongside some impressively qualified and creative people, all of whom are, in substance, working towards furtherance of the Development Goals for the State Services.
On In Development I propose to blog about legal issues and developments relevant to the work of the ICT Branch that I am able to share with the wider community. Needless to say, I have to be fairly careful as to the subject-matter of my posts so as to not breach client confidentiality, but I’ve blogged on legal topics before and am confident that the right balance can readily be struck. I’m open to discussing the content of my posts with others but please bear in mind that I’m not in a position to provide and will not be providing any legal advice to anyone other than my employer, whether through commentary on In Development or otherwise. With that somewhat pesky caveat aside, let the conversation commence.
