EMERGE & EVOLVE

In 2021, the Government Chief Data Steward (GCDS) released the refreshed and revised Government Data Strategy and Roadmap – a bold plan for the government data system over the coming years. While the government data system may be the focus, the Strategy and Roadmap remains relevant to New Zealand’s data system at large. In this presentation by Dr Craig Jones, Deputy Government Statistician and Deputy Chief Executive for Data System Leadership at Stats NZ, you will be given context of the Strategy and Roadmap and the five focus themes for the system, before going into greater detail on the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) and and data code modules. The message is simple: we all have a role to play in strengthening New Zealand’s data system for the benefit of everyone in Aotearoa.

We are at a unique moment in time. Organizations and people around the world continue to experience disruption, impacting our health, environment, financial stability and society at large.  
How do we scale human observation and decision-making?
The answer is: You must be proficient in analytics, machine learning and AI. Your new currency for growth and survival is scaled… and accurate… decision-making.

Heard of Māori data sovereignty and want to be supportive but not sure how? This talk will give some ideas on how non-Māori can be an ally in the space.

We often hear, “data visualisation should tell a story” - but this is not always true. From uncovering insights, to sharing key metrics, or communicating a specific message; data visuals are created for many reasons. So, when should we be trying to tell a story with our data and when should we let it speak for itself? 

Organisations typically build operational algorithms based on the data they have available. In Aotearoa, we have the unique opportunity using the IDI to build algorithms based on data from across government. By doing so we can identify what an organisation needs to collect or get from other agencies to build accurate, robust and unbiased algorithms without the overhead of upfront data sharing agreements that may not yield useful improvements. We can also limit the amount of unnecessary data collection across government thereby reducing frontline effort and privacy risks. We will look at this approach and the risks and benefits of it for government organisations and their customers.

AI and ML have introduced new economic benefits to organizations - but with that comes additional responsibility as well. Organizations have traditionally monitored their modelling efforts with respect to accuracy, system performance, and business value. Now it is time to include additional checks and balances around fairness in modelling. As modelling has become fully integrated into operational processes,  there is heightened awareness and increasing regulation around social responsibility with respect to modelling efforts. There is also a need to quantify the investment in modelling resources. The implementation of enhanced decisioning processes help surface inequities and support organizational strategies and objectives. Success involves achieving a balance between profitability and social responsibility

Shane has pioneered an agile way to gather data requirements over the last 8 years, in conjunction with a number of NZ organisations and data teams. In this session Shane presents why you would want to gather data requirements in an agile way, compared to the traditional big requirements upfront approach. He will explain how you can leverage the open source Information Product Canvas he has developed to document these requirements, and finally he will explain how the Information Product Canvas can be used to help with the prioritisation process all the way through to the delivery of data and content.

SAS Viya interacts with a wide range of IDEs, CI/CD tools and infrastructure utilities via APIs, to manage the governance and deployment of analytical processes.

Hybrid multi-cloud world is a modern state of the art model for government and private enterprise. Organisations are seeking to reduce cost and inject elasticity and agility into their business. However, moving to the cloud and sharing data across application and platforms creates sovereignty challenges. This talk will cover analytics at scale using SAS and Teradata and best practices addressing sovereignty.

Human-driven climate change is a huge challenge for the whole planet. To help address the problem, many countries, including New Zealand, are implementing climate change reporting regimes. Government legislation requires all major NZ organisations to report on their climate change-related activities and risks. For banks, the Reserve Bank of NZ is imposing industry-specific reporting requirements. Kiwibank’s first reporting use case identifies all loan-secured properties that are impacted by sea level rise and quantifies the lending risk. Property addresses are matched to Land Information NZ-provided addresses. Once matched, climate change metrics such as sea level rise, provided by third-party modellers, can be added and the resulting impacts analysed and reported. SAS Data Quality is our tool of choice for matching Kiwibank customers’ property address data with external property addresses data. It uses an NZ-customised address database, knowledge base, and address parsing rules. It is indeed the “secret sauce” that helps Kiwibank meet its climate change reporting obligations

Analysts are the voice of Data and play a key role telling how it is - rather than how we would like it to be. This doesn't always make Analysts popular and can lead to the question - what good am I doing here! In this session I pose the question whether Analytics makes the world a better place and share two great examples from SAS of how it can and does - including some ideas to take away.

You may or may not be aware that the end is nigh for SAS Enterprise Guide. From Viya 4 onwards, SAS EG capability will be superseded by SAS Studio with flows. This transition makes sense, as the world is moving to web based clients, rather than having to install and maintain client software on user devices. This presentation will show you the latest SAS Studio flow capability, and discuss the approach for migrating all your EG projects to SAS Studio.

We’ve all heard it before, COVID-19 has been a catalyst for transformation in health care. But pandemics aren’t the only thing driving disruption, and certainly won’t be the thing sustaining change for the future. What disruptors should we embrace? How has that worked so far? and What does that look like for the future of digital healthcare?

WorkSafe New Zealand uses SAS EG to help users generate insights from Accident Compensation Corporation data through the System for Work-related Injury Forecasting and Targeting (SWIFT). SWIFT integrates and presents work-related injury data in way that enables users to navigate their own journey of discovery, resulting in impactful operational intelligence insights that drive improvements in outcomes. In this session WorkSafe New Zealand will cover how SWIFT was built and how it is used to generate insights.

An outline of the key business benefits, functional improvements, and migration utilities available to modernise your SAS environment to SAS Viya.

Containers have revolutionized software development chains. Traditionally SAS programming environments would require licensing and maintaining multiple environments consisting of large monolithic servers.
With the release of Analytics Pro Cloud Native, SAS Programmers can now leverage container driven development processes and have disposable, project specific environments that can be automated through CI/CD processes. This talk will discuss local and serverless deployment approaches with Analytics Pro Cloud Native.

After 2 years of strategic partnership between Microsoft and SAS, this presentation will focus on success brought to shared clients, how this was achieved, as well as the roadmap for value driving integrations between SAS and Microsoft Azure.

In this presentation, Frank will talk about Corrections’ challenges of  translating data to business information to  facilitate and enable Corrections’ sophisticated enterprise planning for achieving better outcomes. He will explain the initial steps his team has taken to gain quick wins by providing consolidated business information for enterprise planning and also describes how the Department can develop the Business Intelligence capability to facilitate Departmental Enterprise Planning transformation.

As an analyst you really want your stuff to be heard. You're sick of putting up analysis that is ignored, misunderstood or just not wanted. Well after years of randomized control trials (read getting stuff wrong) we've finally stumbled upon some keys. But be warned, your analytical brain may not like the answers

The SAS/Microsoft partnership opens up a new world of opportunities for our customers. This presentation will focus on the reasons for investing in Aotearoa/NZ, how the partnership can support sustainability goals  as well as when you can expect to start using Microsoft’s Hyper Scale Cloud.