In October 2020, Internal Affairs’ top digital inclusion manager Adrienne Moor said “there seemed initially to be strong interest” in pushing the AI lighthouse project on, but the pandemic may have robbed it of focus. Education Ministry raises concerns about project ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder), autism, giftedness and dyslexia are all examples of neuro-diversity.

Lighthouse projects were envisaged to also involve non-government organisations, but this one did not get to that.Īn non-government organisation (NGO) coalition of support groups earlier this month said the Government was failing to deliver for neuro-diverse children in schools. Three months later, in August, Microsoft got ministerial approval to buy the land for the data centre in Auckland. This was followed in May 2020 by a $100m-plus data centre project announced by the Government and Microsoft. The MOU was updated in February 2020 to add the lighthouse projects. The deal was not made public until RNZ inquiries earlier this year. The Government’s non-binding Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2017 gave Microsoft a special role in digital development nationally. Critics question why Microsoft should get leg-up from NZ GovtĬritics have questioned why a trillion-dollar US company should get a leg-up from the Government. The ministry also eventually rejected Microsoft’s other proposal, to add to the “lighthouse” projects its Operation Constellation of real-time data collection and analysis in schools, citing trust problems. Google approached the ministry about this time for “a similar opportunity for research-based work” but no one picked it up, “so again, nothing happened”. But by the end of 2021, no one on the seven-strong steering group of senior managers had had time to even go to meetings or do any work on it, and the project “fell into a black hole”, the project leader said.

Purpose timeline in ms project