This year's NZSIS Security Threat Environment report lists many threats facing New Zealand. But one of the biggest is not on its list: the Government has more useful intelligence than ever before, yet it is not digesting that intelligence fast enough to matter.

Ministers need faster briefings that turn intelligence into policy choices before events move on. To achieve this, Cabinet requires a decision-support process fit for today.

Comparable systems have already put regular strategic briefings at the centre of government. Washington prepares an intelligence brief for the President every day. Other serious nations offer daily and weekly updates that keep senior decision makers closer to events as they unfold.

The shortfall is not in what New Zealand knows. It is in how slowly we decide. Our system is still over-classified, too paper-based, too formal and too slow.

It was built for an older world and designed to deliberate rather than act, but we now live in one where information moves much faster. Several of our partners have made much of that journey and built mature systems for turning intelligence into decision advantage.

New Zealand will never collect as much intelligence as larger nations, and it need not try. The material that matters most is increasingly available online. What we can choose to do is close the gap between what any analyst with an internet connection and a bank account can know in near-real time and what Cabinet can act on. That gap should be measured in days, or sometimes hours, not weeks.

The tools already exist. What New Zealand needs is people who know where to look, and who are empowered to put critical information to senior officials quickly. Sometimes that will mean watching live information streams and using specialists skilled in AI to filter and analyse data at volume and velocity.

In this decade, strategic relevance belongs to the government that organises itself to act inside the window of opportunity, not the one that writes the best assessment after the window has closed. New Zealand's partners and competitors are moving this way. Wellington is not. We are two steps behind: an industrial-age Cabinet that never fully entered the information age, confronting an environment already moving at pace into the age of intelligence.

The good news is that this is not mainly about money. It is about organising government better. That means it can be fixed now.

Read our research note 'Too slow to notice: Four fixes for a fast Cabinet' and watch our explainer video. Listen to John and Oliver discuss these issues and others on our podcast.