Implementation Roadmap

Overview

Policy without a timeline is aspiration. This section breaks down the document's recommendations into concrete, phased actions — what should happen first, what can wait, and what depends on earlier steps completing successfully.

The roadmap spans from 2026 through 2035, divided into three phases of increasing ambition. Phases are intentionally staged rather than concurrent: each phase produces evidence — assessments, pilot results, evaluation data — that informs the next. This is the scientific method applied to policy. We hypothesise that certain interventions will work, we pilot them at manageable scale, we measure outcomes rigorously, and we scale what works while abandoning what doesn't. "Big bang" policy reform — implementing sweeping structural change without an evidence base — has a poor track record. NZ's COVID-19 wage subsidy, by contrast, succeeded partly because it was designed for rapid iteration and clear exit criteria.

The costs of getting AI transition wrong are asymmetric: under-investing in the early years means arriving at 2031 without the institutions, infrastructure, or social consensus needed for the deeper structural changes that phase three requires. The first two years are therefore disproportionately important — they are the foundation on which everything else rests.

Phases

• Year 1–2 (2026–2027) — Assessment, pilots, and laying the groundwork
• Year 3–5 (2028–2030) — Scaling successes and building permanent institutions
• Year 5–10 (2031–2035) — Structural transformation and adaptive governance