Tauranga City Council is being asked to consider taking a further step into the digital age by advocating the need for a city and region-wide digital strategy.

At this week's Community Development Committee the Venture Centre along with Tauranga City Elders Forum and Tauranga Regional Multicultural Council spoke to councillors on their visions for the city.

Council is being asked to look at its vision for a digital strategy in the future.

Launched last May, the Venture Centre is a new venture designed to boost the success of innovative and entrepreneurial enterprises, by connecting people and resources digitally.

The organisation's purpose is to provide a place online where people can find people and 'ideas can find ideas”, and also deliver a voice for and visibility of the communications and technology community. Since being established it has more than 250 people on its database.

Venture Centre co-founder Jo Allum is pushing for the city to become truly digital by addressing open data, ultra-fast broadband and project funding in what is a prime opportunity for Tauranga to have a point of difference from the rest of the North Island.

Jo says a digital strategy will help define council's role in working alongside the business sector and broadband service providers to become a digital-friendly city.

Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.

'Tauranga is the perfect place to start this with your links to the port and all the benefits that you know about Tauranga. It gives you a point of difference,” says Jo.

'It's a great opportunity for us as much as you.”

With council accounting for a wider database than Venture Centre's, the organisation is looking to align with council to progress talks in the definition, design and development of a Tauranga digital strategy.

The organisation representatives feel the lack of a city-wide, and regional-wide, digital strategy needs to be addressed through recognition and acknowledgment of this strategy and its role in the future of Tauranga.

When TCC councillor John Robson asked where such digital strategies exist, Jo says various cities including Adelaide, Amsterdam, Barcelona and San Francisco are all showing digital progression.

But she says council need to consider such a strategy before other cities get the jump on them as frontrunners, with Canterbury beginning a similar initiative.

'It's a shift in mind-set, skill-set and tool-set,” says Jo.

'It's about creating an inclusive, connected, vibrant, innovative sustainable and successful Tauranga.”