A soon-to-be disbanded government science research entity is launching a challenge for people to create job-cutting software.
Callaghan Innovation, a government-owned entity, put out the appeal earlier this month calling for the creation of a "government department expenditure tracking system" that would be "New Zealand’s DOGE".
"All government departments would be subject to storing their expenditure on a distributed ledger with a publicly available reason for the expenditure," Callaghan Innovation’s appeal said.
University of Otago communications lecturer Dr Olivier Jutel was "horrified" to discover Callaghan Innovation going down this pathway.
"Callaghan Innovation is a Crown entity and they've been through some really brutal restructures, which have seen some of our best scientists being cleared out.
"What's been left, it would seem, are the techno-utopians ... really invested in the kinds of tech that normal people don't really like or use or understand."
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is an initiative of United States president Donald Trump and promoted by billionaire mogul Elon Musk.
It aims to create a financial and performance audit of the entire US federal government and make recommendations for drastic reforms. It has proved controversial for creating wide-scale redundancies, and is the subject of several lawsuits.
Dr Jutel said there were genuine concerns about possible invasion of privacy in creating software similar to DOGE.
"So the notion that this quite radical crypto AI rump within Callaghan would think that what we need right now in this country is a DOGE modelled on Elon Musk's takeover of the US government and the destruction of vital citizen privacy protections is insane. I mean, it's highly ideological and out of touch."
A spokesman for Callaghan Innovation said the appeal was part of a community event "designed to support the development of emerging Web3 developers, including students, to test and develop innovative new concepts based on blockchain technology".
"There are a raft of problem statements on various topics including banking innovation, welfare distribution, voting processes, tax solutions, council consenting systems and public expenditure tracking.
"It’s our understanding that emphasis on implementing a DOGE-specific solution is a title aimed at generating interest in this exercise, rather than anything else.
"There is no expectation that any projects will be implemented by government. This is purely an academic exercise."
Earlier this year, Science and Research Minister Judith Collins confirmed Callaghan Innovation would be disbanded, with many of its functions shifted to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE).
At the time, Ms Collins said Callaghan Innovation had "simply been spread too thinly across too many functions, leading to poor financial performance and an over-reliance on Crown funding".
