Level 2, Wintec House
Cnr Anglesea and Nisbet St.
Hamilton 3204
0800 86 22 84
info@tepūkenga.ac.nz
tepūkenga.ac.nz
8 September 2023
William James
By email: [FYI request #23151 email]
Tēnā koe William
Request under the Official Information Act 1982 – telecommunications spend
I refer to your email of 15 June and your subsequent refinement email of 6 July 2023 requesting the
following information from Te Pūkenga – New Zealand Institute of Skil s and Technology (Te Pūkenga)
- please note we have numbered your questions for ease of reference:
1. The total telecommunications spend incurred by Te Pūkenga across all business units,
divisions, and subsidiaries for the period 15 June 2022 to 15 June 2023.
A detailed breakdown of the telecommunications spend, including but not limited to:
a) Expenditure on landline phone services, and the providers that are currently being served
by each business division, if available, and when they were selected as part of a tender
offer.
b) Expenditure on mobile phone services, and the providers that are currently being served
by each business division, if available, and when they were selected as part of a tender
offer.
c) Expenditure on internet connectivity and broadband services nationally.
d) Expenditure on data services, such as leased lines or dedicated circuits nationally.
e) Expenditure on audio or video conferencing services nationally.
f) Expenditure on any other telecommunication services or solutions nationally.
In your refinement email of 6 July, you also clarified point f) above to the fol owing:
To clarify, in point (f), I am interested in receiving a detailed breakdown of any
telecommunication services or solutions nationally that are not covered by mobile
telecommunications spend (mobility). This includes investment into ICT, networking,
video conferencing solutions, and/or cybersecurity solutions. For each
telecommunications vendor (e.g., Spark, One NZ, 2Degrees), I request their service type
(e.g., mobility/ICT cloud services) and the associated 12-month spend. If obtaining
certain data would require an unreasonable amount of effort, please list those cases in
bullet points, along with the reasons for their exclusion (e.g., time constraints or lack of
data).
2. Any contracts or agreements related to telecommunications services that Te Pūkenga has
entered into during the specified period. This includes contracts with telecommunications
service providers or any other relevant vendors. Please provide copies of these contracts or, if
not possible, a summary of their key terms.
3. Any relevant policies, guidelines, or procedures that govern the procurement and
management of telecommunications services within Te Pūkenga.
4. Any internal reports or assessments conducted by Te Pūkenga regarding the efficiency, cost-
effectiveness, or performance of telecommunications services during the specified period.
Additionally, within your email of 6 July, you added a further request for the fol owing information:
5. Furthermore, I would appreciate information on Te Pūkenga's [sic]
plans to centralize their
telecommunications contact. If decisions on which telecommunications vendor/supplier to use
have already been made, please provide details. If such decisions have not been made, I would
like to know the name of the department/business unit/chapter or tribe that holds the
decision-making authority under the current Te Pūkenga organizational design. Please include
this information when the message is received by Te Pūkenga staff.
On 13 July, we sent you a notification of an extension to the time period for making a decision on
your request of 40 working days. This was because your request stil involved a large amount of
information and gathering information within scope of your request necessitated a search through a
large quantity of information. Additionally, we needed to allow time for necessary consultations to
be carried out in order to make a final decision on your request.
This letter provides a formal decision on your request under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA).
Te Pūkenga and its business divisions
As my office advised in the email dated 6 July, as of 1 January 2023, all 16 of New Zealand’s provider-
based Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics (ITPs) subsidiaries and more than eight Industry
Training Organisations (also previously known as Transitional Industry Training Organisations or
TITOs) officially became one entity, operating as Te Pūkenga. The former ITPs and TITOs operate as
business divisions of Te Pūkenga.
Within that same email, it was noted that Te Pūkenga only holds certain historic information of
former TITOs from the date each TITO transitioned into Te Pūkenga Work Based Learning subsidiary
(WBL) between 2021 and 2022. This means that some records held by TITOs before transitioning into
WBL are not held by Te Pūkenga.
Initial refinement invitation
Initial y, we considered we would be in a better position to grant your request if it was refined to a
previous 12-month period, hence our recommendation to narrow the scope. We had hoped this
would mean that we were able to fulfil your request.
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However, it has become clear that we are not able to provide the specific breakdown that you have
requested. We explain this below. We had also considered whether charging for the information was
a viable option, however, again do not believe that would change the outcome of our decision below.
We further believe that without refining your request we would certainly have had to refuse the
entire request under section 18(f) due to substantial collation and research.
The decision
Question 1 (a-f)
For the col ation and consideration of the information within scope of your questions a) to f), we
sought information from al business divisions. In doing so it became clear that while we would always
endeavour to ensure information we release would be accurate, there are too many inconsistencies
in the information due to the different ways in which information is defined, col ected and reported
across the individual business divisions and multiple systems, for us to guarantee we would be able
to provide meaningful data.
Unfortunately, we are unable to provide you with information disclosing details of some IT and
telecommunication service providers due to confidentiality clauses in non-disclosure agreements or
commercial sensitivity. We are also unable to provide a full breakdown of the expenditure as
requested and must withhold this information under:
• section 9(2)(b)(i ) of the OIA to protect information where the making available of the
information would likely unreasonably prejudice the commercial position of the person who
supplied or who is the subject of the information; and
• section 9(2)(ba)(i) to protect information which is subject to an obligation of confidence or
which any person has been or could be compel ed to provide under the authority of any
enactment, where the making available of the information would be likely to prejudice the
supply of similar information, or information from the same source, and it is in the public
interest that such information should continue to be supplied.
In order to satisfy the public interest in this information, however, we are able to tell you that in
2022, Te Pūkenga spent at least $875,000 in software licensing fees and business divisions spent at
least $22.9 million. We can also advise that over $6 mil ion has been spent on telecommunications,
including internet and data services, by Te Pūkenga business divisions during the time period of June
2022 to June 2023. Of this, at least:
• $800,000 can be attributed to landline services (point a),
• $2 million to mobile services (point b),
• $1 million to internet and broadband services (point c),
• $900,000 to data services (point d),
• $400,000 to audio-video conferencing (point e),
• $1 million on other miscellaneous services (point f).
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Question 2
While there has been maintenance or consolidating of existing contracts, Te Pūkenga has not entered
into new agreements or contracts during the period 15 June 2022 - 15 June 2023. There have been
no changes in suppliers for network services.
Question 3 Te Pūkenga Procurement Policy is publicly available and can be found at: www.xn--tepkenga-
szb.ac.nz/assets/Policies/Procurement-Policy.pdf. Please note that each business division may have
their own procurement policies and processes.
Question 4 Internally, we have identified the current costs of some inter-site and internet connectivity national y,
but no assessments have yet been undertaken to determine its efficiency/cost effectiveness or
performance. No analysis or view has been undertaken on voice communications to date.
Question 5
There is an intent to centralise telecommunications, at least from a contractual perspective.
However, no decision has been made on any aspect of communications to date. There is an intent to
develop a plan for market in 2023/24, however, this plan is not scoped or defined at this point. The
approach of this tender will be made publicly available in the New Zealand Government Electronic
Tenders Service (GETS) when available. Te Pūkenga Digital is the decision-making division inside Te
Pūkenga.
You have the right to make a complaint to the Ombudsman under section 28(3) of the OIA if you are
not happy with this response. Information about how to do this is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or by cal ing 0800 802 602.
Ngā mihi
Peter Winder
Tumuaki | Chief Executive
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