Local Responses: Managing the Crowded Age Successfully
Summaries of the interviews that followed the case study videos

Ministry of Economic Development, Companies Office Improving service delivery in an information age	Justin Hygate
Ngati Awa Service Acadamy Ngati Awa Social and health Service, Whakatane	Enid Leighton
Universal College of Learning (UCOL) Alternative tertiary delivery, Palmerston North	Paul McElroy
Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs Community Capacity Building, Auckland	Isabel Evans (Ministry of Social Development)
Discovery One Alternative primary education delivery, Christchurch	Vicki Buck
Department of Conservation Campbell Island rat eradication	Hugh Logan

Introduced and facilitated by Ian Fraser

We’ve heard from two Cabinet Ministers this morning, including the Public Service’s own Minister.

You get a flavour of the enhanced expectations they have of the Public Service in the preface to the State Services Commission’s 2001 Statement of Intent. It reads:

‘The Minister of State Services has asked the State Services Commissioner to lead improved system performance:

1. Through a collaborative whole of government approach.’ (The e-government work being lead by the Commission is a good example of this.)
2. By challenging public servants to use fresh imaginative approaches to policy development and to draw on the expertise of people working at the coal face to deliver services to New Zealanders.
3. By making explicit the values and standards expected of all State servants.’

It doesn’t actually end there, but that’s what I’ve selected to make this point because some of the most successful Public Service initiatives in recent times have grown from front line experience and innovation. These are examples where imagination and creativity and lateral thinking have been applied in ways that have produced the goods, but without compromising the reliability of the system overall.

When we talk about balancing innovation and stability, the theme of this conference, it is not just talking the talk. Out there are people and institutions who are walking the walk and we’re now going to introduce you to a selection of them. We’ll show you some video case studies. There is a regional flavour to them, which is deliberate, and most of them focus on successful community-based cross-sectoral initiatives.

At the end of each case study we’re going to stop the video. I will bring that particular enterprise’s manager or someone who has been delegated to talk for that institution in to discuss some of the issues that emerge from the video. At the end we’re going to spend a few minutes with all six, throwing the ball around.

Ministry of Economic Development, Companies Office
Improving Service Delivery in an Information Age - Justin Hygate

Q: Justin, one of your people in the video described the electronic register as "cheap, efficient and simple". Is that going to be true for all government processes or do some services and processes lend themselves better to e-government e-processes than others?

A: Unquestionably some lend themselves better than others. We’re in a luxurious situation given that we’ve got a commercially savvy client base. We deal predominantly with the business sector, most of whom don’t have digital divide issues. We have a registry of information that people need in order to do business. That it is a very strong driver to want to get that information to people.

Q: You saw in that video a net expert give your website nine out of ten for functionality, but three out of ten in terms of being easily accessible and navigable. Is that a fair assessment?

A: I’m waiting for that internet consultant to send me his business card because I imagine that was what he was trying to do. There are a lot of people with a view of navigation. We accept that. As you would have heard him say, it is a cleaner site than it was. When we first went on line we had a different look and feel. It would be fair to say that we’ve concentrated on putting the mechanics in there. We’ve had 1.5 million people find information out in the last business year on that internet site. This means that 1.5 million people have been able to get information from that site.

Q: Are you telling me that the site is under constant development?

A: Yes, undoubtedly. In fact, before Christmas you will see more and more functionality added to it.

Q: One way of making a system user friendly is to ask the users what they want. Do you monitor the public?

A: We do. We have a very active client survey every year. We go out and talk to our clients.

Q: What have they been telling you about the system? Have they been giving you nine out of ten for functionality and three out of ten for navigability?

A: I’d like to think that they’ve given us more than three out of ten for navigability, but they have definitely given us really top marks for the functionality. Navigation is always an area that people have difficulty with. It is an audience thing. Some people who are more confident on the internet will jump in and get to where they want to go. Others will find it a bit more difficult.

Q: When you’re driving through a new system like this how customer-focused can you be?

A: We believe that we led the customers to it. If in 1996 when we went on line we had asked our clients, "What do you think about us putting it on the internet," they would have probably said, "Don’t." They would have probably said that things were OK as they were. The legal profession is quite a conservative profession and certainly the accounting profession is as well. (Apologies to any members.) We’ve actually dragged them to it and the interesting transformation has been that they now defend our site for us. Last year there was an issue about data integrity. That was killed in the media by the Law Society themselves.

Q: You say in the video that you were determined to drive straight towards the vision of electronic register. What were the obstacles in the way of getting to that?

A: Money - in terms that we’ve never been an organisation that has gone for big computer developments, put our hand out to Government and said we want squillions of dollars. We’ve funded it on an incremental basis. We’ve added a bit every year, so there is a bit of money, a bit of patience. There have been some issues around legislation, for example, signatures on bits of paper. We could have waited for public key identification on all of these debates that are going on. We met with our client user groups and proposed a signature and authentication process. They have embraced these through the 330,000 actions a month we get. The client user groups have endorsed these strongly.

Q: Was it made more or less difficult because you were attempting to do this within a Public Service environment?

A: It was probably easier.

Q: Why was that?

A: In the private sector, you’re probably looking at a short-term significant capital investment and trying to get your return more quickly, whereas our incremental movement has been something that we were able to achieve within a Public Service framework.

Q: You’ve described it as a journey. Some travel writers I know argue that it is more important to travel hopefully than to arrive. Where does the journey go from here?

A: The interesting thing is that the Companies Office is part of a wider part of the Ministry of Economic Development, the Operations Branch. We’re applying the same business thinking that we’ve applied to the Companies Office to the Intellectual Property Office, to our Insolvency Service and to the personal properties Security Register, which will go on line next year. We are using the same tried and true and successful processes across all of our other agency involvements within the Ministry.

Ian Fraser: Thank you, Justin Hygate

Ngati Awa Service Academy
Ngati Awa Social and Health Services, Whakatane – Enid Leighton

Q: In the video this is described as a bottom-up approach. I’m really interested to know how that works.

A: Initially it was very difficult. This particular proposal came about well over a year ago. When it came about it was put to one of the government departments and was turned down. This was because the programme covered so many other components that belonged to a number of government departments that it didn’t fit the particular government department that we approached.

It had had housing components in terms of the experiential learning that was being carried out. It had social outcomes and it had employment outcomes. It was such a mixed bag of things that it didn’t fit and because of the fact that it didn’t fit it was shelved.

Q: How did you go about getting it to fit?

A: We didn’t actually get it to fit. It was our view that either it was accepted as it was or we wouldn’t run it. We had to wait for an environment that enabled this sort of programme to go ahead. It was the local solutions strategy that enabled this particular project to come out. It was last November that we brought the proposal out, put it on the table to Government and it went through as one of the 12 local solution programmes.

Q: This is a case of local leadership?

A: Certainly local leadership. The programme was not only developed by us in the community in terms of iwi, but it was also developed by the New Zealand Army for our community. We realised a very long time ago that working with youth needed more expertise. We could put in all of the passion, we could put in all of the stuff that we talk about when we talk about self-esteem, but at the end of the day we needed more assistance. We looked to the New Zealand Army for that. The New Zealand Army came to the party. They have an historical record of being able to work with young people and look at mind shifts. They created a partnership with us that enabled this sort of proposal to go forward.

Q: There is obviously a change in government approach that enables this sort of project to work, a change from the government determining the services and their delivery to the reverse of that. What changes have there been for Ngati Awa as a result of that? Is there an evaluation survey going on parallel with this?

A: Absolutely. What has occurred is that Ngati Awa have been able to use a number of government departments and that brings about a much bigger picture. For example, the evaluation component of the programme, Work and Income New Zealand, have a cadetship that works with Auckland University. It was through that cadetship that we were able to bring a full-time evaluator/researcher on board. That is one component.

Te Puni Kokiri have been able to supply us with a number of people in the field who can give us some expert advice. Te Puni Kokiri have assisted us, not to broker relationships with other government departments, but also on the ground level in Whakatane where we’re able to receive extra support.

Housing New Zealand have recently come on board through one of their initiatives in the partnership arena, where we had a housing initiative supplying houses to the local community. Now Housing New Zealand have seen an opportunity to come on board with us and work in there. In terms of what have we been able to achieve and what this Government has enabled us to gain is the fact that the government departments are now being more open to suggestion. They now allow more creativity, certainly the ones that we deal with. I don’t know if that is a consistent approach, but the people we are dealing with are more open to flexibility. A lot of flexibility is being applied.

Listening today to the speakers’ innovation, this is certainly innovation being assisted by a number of government departments. We saw the Child,Youth and Family, and that is interesting. The Service Academy is a vehicle enabling us to deliver housing initiatives, to deliver social outcomes, to deliver alternative education programmes etc. Child, Youth and Family involvement is the latest SCAF project, or the Stronger Community Action Fund. Now that is another Government project that sits alongside and actually adds value to the rest of the package that is being created.

Interestingly it wasn’t a government department that came to Ngati Awa, it wasn’t a number of government departments who looked at Whakatane, who looked at the Eastern Bay of Plenty and thought that all of these needs are there. We chose the government department that we would work with. The innovation and the creativity are at the community level. The ability to create an environment that enables that creativity to come through is where I see the government departments needing to be. It is allowing community ideas to come forward, allowing people to have their own solutions for their own local problems.

Q: Is it enabling?

A: Yes, absolutely.

Q: Is it working?

A: It is certainly working for us. All my contract managers are here. What else can I say?

Ian Fraser: That was absolutely the right answer. Thank you Enid Leighton.

Universal College of Learning (UCOL)
Alternative tertiary education delivery, Palmerston North – Paul McElroy

Q: In very brief terms, what are the main ways in which UCOL differs from a traditional polytechnic?

A: Firstly, we work very hard at keeping the learners right at the centre of what we do. That is a key focus at UCOL. When my staff ask me who or what is the most important resource, I say it is the students. They don’t always agree with me. The key issue is focus on our learners, focus on their needs. Don’t allow anything else to get in the way.

Q: Communities have regularly expressed the most profound suspicion of innovators and innovation in education since Dr Beeby. Did you strike resistance within the community to doing things this way?

A: Yes, we did. In fact we deliberately adopted a policy of not telling anyone what we were doing. We knew if we did we would strike traditional conservatism and resistance. It was critical because there was so much resistance. There was only one way to learn maths. It was the way I learnt it when I was in Standard One and I still don’t remember that. So we just had to do things differently. We just had to sneak up on them. We had to demonstrate what was possible and that is what we tried to do.

Q: In a relatively big regional polytech, which this one obviously is, how hard is it to develop a really flexible personalised approach?

A: Really difficult and the biggest challenge from my staff’s point of view is to take dollars out of the classroom and put them into supported learning. Almost all of our students go through an individual diagnostic where they’re assessed in their learning styles, their approach to learning, their self-esteem and then we tailor their learning path. That is so different from the way the system is normally set up of lock-stepped education. Managing the staff through that process was very difficult.

Q: Local government in Palmerston North has been focused for a long time on promoting the place as a part of a knowledge centre, or a knowledge economy. What relationship did you have with local government in developing the Universal College of Learning?

A: Local government was fantastic.

Q: Was this was an important collaboration?

A: Absolutely. They completely took our view on board that the campus must be right in the centre of town. It must breathe life into the town and it must be accessible for learners. It doesn’t matter whether Bob Jones says the rules of property are location, location, location. When it comes to access to education we have the same three rules. They pushed the boundaries. They manipulated the town planning scheme. They made certain we had a new location in the centre of town. They collaborated with us.

Q: Yes, it’s not too late. I’ve got the form here. How would you characterise your relationship with central government?

A: One of the good things in education was the light-handed approach from the Ministry, not a dead-handed one. That has created for us the ability to innovate and to be flexible. One of the things that I’m working very hard with Government at the moment is to ensure as they harness the system a little bit more that we don’t lose that. Our ability to innovate, to do things differently at a local level is critical.

Q: As managers we are all obliged to manage in the best possible way our organisation’s risk profile. What were the risks that you identified in going towards the cutting edge as you have at the Universal College?

A: The first one was community resistance and I’ve talked about our main way of dealing with that. The second one was staff and the way we dealt with that was that we adopted a well tried phrase of a thousand blooms. We set no KPI, no goals, no hard objectives. We said, "Keep the learner at the centre and go for it." The third thing was what we did in our infrastructure. We allowed ourselves to have a path back. If this hadn’t worked we knew how to roll back into traditional education.

Ian Fraser: Thank you, Paul.

Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs
Community Capacity Building, Auckland – Isabel Evans (Ministry of Social Development)

Q: Isabel Evans from the Ministry of Social Development has been delegated to discuss this initiative with me. Isabel, on the video there is a comment about communities needing to take responsibility, rather than assuming that the Government is going to do it for them. How true is it in your experience that when Government takes the responsibility or assumes the responsibility and works from the top-down that communities stop trying?

A: It is like how we do things ourselves. If we take responsibility for ourselves we will be far more successful in what we do. As government agencies we’ve thought for a long time that we probably knew the best way of doing things. We’ve gone out to the communities and said what we believe needs to happen out here, given that we’ve got all this information from various sources such as statistics.

Q: We call that consultation?

A: We call that consultation. This is what we believe should happen and we’ve done that. While some things have worked, some things haven’t worked so well. The approach that we’ve taken over the last few years is to go to the community and say that we don’t necessarily know the best way of doing things. We admit that. We say to them that we know that they have needs out here. Who best to know those needs than themselves in the community, both as individuals and collectively. The process that we use now works far more effectively. We talk with them about getting their views and thoughts on what is needed. We then involve them in whatever process that is put in place after that to make decisions around what we will do in the community or how we will go in and support the community as government agencies. For them it is all about the fact that they know better than anybody what their needs are. They know better than anybody how it is going to impact on their lives, so therefore, the solution should be coming from them as well as the ideas and the strategies.

Our job is to look at how we can support putting that in place so that they get what they want. We get the strategies that are developed, the ideas that are put in place. The benefits for us are in how we’re going to do that, how we work. They benefit by what gets put in place. This impacts on each of them as individuals and on the community.

Q: How has this way of doing things improved the quality of the services being delivered? Looking at the project overall, are the outcomes successful?

A: The outcomes are far more successful if the community is involved in developing the ideas and the solutions. This is because it is what they want to do. It is exactly what they see that they need. They have input into how we can do things better. It is exactly what they want to do, so they’re going to be far more willing to make those things work and that has been proven time and time again.

Q: There has been a lot of talk about the business of capacity building. In this area what does that mean? What has been involved in building capacity? What have you had to do?

A: The Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs facilitated the process of going out into the community and getting ideas and feedback from community on what their needs were. From that, eight programmes of action were developed around the country. Four of them are in Auckland, one in Waikato, two in Wellington and one in Canterbury.

This was what the community was telling us was needed and so the tasks were itemised. There was a process of consultation between the agencies and the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs. In some cases there were some crossovers between government agencies. Those things needed to be sorted out. A work programme for achieving the tasks was developed from that for each agency so that they could work with the community to get the outcomes that were needed.

Q: You’ve been able to work effectively, collaboratively?

A: Absolutely.

Q: Without the demarcations banging into each other all the time?

A: Auckland is my region. I can speak about Auckland. The Ministry of Social Development has worked collaboratively with the Ministry of Pacific Affairs plus also other agencies. In some of the tasks we’ve been identified as being able to supply a support role. Other agencies are also. For us to be successful we need to work with some of those other agencies because we’re only a part of the whole in there. It has been good.

Q: Is it being monitored?

A: Yes, it is. In each of the regions that have a programme of action in place there is a group of people referred to as a community reference group. They have a monitoring role and have a responsibility to the Ministry of Pacific Affairs to report back on the development of the initiatives and the achievements of those milestones. More importantly you have a group of people in each region now who you’ve got to work with as well as the community. They act as a very good conduit between the government agencies and the community because they’re out there all the time. The value of that community reference group in my view is more than just a monitoring role. It is being able to have a two-way information flow with the community and with the government agencies.

Q: Because a lot of the capacity and the skills are out there in the community?

A: Yes absolutely, a lot of the skills, qualities, talents, huge ideas, innovative things that they want to put in place. I think that our role is to get in there and support them to make those things happen.

Ian Fraser: Thanks, Isabel

Discovery One
Alternative primary education delivery, Christchurch – Vicki Buck

Q: Vicki, in the video someone says that with any innovation you have risk. What were the risks? What are the risks?

A: Just doing it. It took three years to do and it is all voluntary. Do you want to have a life for three years? This is the major risk. The only other risk is that there are a few negative people who are just hanging out for it to fall over, who would love for it not to work. When we did consider the whole risk thing, the risk of not doing it was way way more than the risks of doing it. I have to say that the actual doing it has been also a huge amount of fun. The people involved have been extraordinary.

Q: Did you consider the risk that the approach might turn out not to work? That kids won’t be good, effective self-managing learners?

A: No, I don’t believe that for a moment. When you look at a young child you see we are natural learners. We love to learn and our natural curiosity is something that we want to retain. What we have is people who love learning, enjoy learning, and it is the greatest game in town. What we tend to do is put them in a school system and tell them to sit there and be quiet. Often these are kinaesthetic learners who need to talk to take the world’s information in and this is going to be quite difficult. We cut off all their learning receptors and we put them into a situation where they can’t learn.

What we really wanted to do was under this wonderful section 156 in the Education Act that allows anybody to do this within the State system. You only need 21 parents, although that one has got 200. It allows that diversity and difference within the State education system. I mean it is a stunning little piece of law. What we wanted to do was to keep that love of learning. We all have to be lifelong learners.

Q: This, as you’ve just said or reinforced, is a State institution. From the point of view of the Public Service and in this case we’re talking about the Ministry of Education, what do you think the biggest risks and the biggest problems have been from their perspective?

A: Probably us. We were probably quite challenging to them. This was because what we wanted to do was not just create a school that was about the child being free to discover learning. It was not just about liking to learn around what they wanted to do and the way that they wanted to do it and the place that they wanted to do it - not stuck sitting down in a classroom in the suburbs. We wanted to create a model that encouraged a whole lot of other people to do something. Difference and diversity means that all of us have got a different choice within the State system. We wanted to do a model for other people. We wanted to encourage other people. What we really wanted to cause was a revolution in education. It was really that simple.

Q: Has the collaboration with the Ministry been a good one and a productive one?

A: They’re great. They pay the rent. Let me just say that we’ll be applying for the high school really soon, so I think they’re stunning.

Q: If you think I’m letting you off the hook, I just want to know what kind of relationship you’ve had with the department?

A: It was difficult for them at the beginning because they didn’t have the rules in place to know how to process things. Although it had been in the Act for 12 years, nobody had done one. So they had to make up the rules as they went along. Then it was really challenging them, even for the local staff. For example, the building doesn’t have many walls. We wanted a fish tank, so we defined the fish tank as the wall. They didn’t think that that was fair because it wasn’t a wall it was a fish tank. But it served as a wall. There were all those little issues.

Also we wanted to lease all the facilities. We didn’t want to own anything because we wanted the whole focus of the Board of Trustees to be on learning and great innovations in learning, rather than a hole in the swimming-pool fence. So all the facilities are community facilities. We own literally nothing - the computers, but very little else. Everything about the whole thing was a paradigm shift for them. Along the way I think they’ve had a lot of fun and a lot of challenges and they’ve responded to them really positively.

Ian Fraser: Thanks, Vicki Buck

Department of Conservation

Campbell Island Rat Eradication – Hugh Logan

Q: In the video you say that we need to be risk aware, not risk averse. Would you describe the risks that you had to consider as a background to doing this project?

A: First of all we were attempting to clear rodents from an island three times larger than anything that had ever been attempted in the world before. The largest island that had been attempted in the world before was also in New Zealand at Kapiti. New Zealand has been described by a world-famous ecologist as the only country in the world that’s turned island pest eradication into an export industry.

The risks in this instance were isolation. It is 700 miles south of New Zealand. Simply getting there, flying the helicopter there alone was a very risky business. The risks of failure are high because of the size of the island, because of the climate. There are physical risks to the people operating there. Life rarely goes to plan.

One of the risks that turned into an event was the transporting of the first shipment of rat bait down to Invercargill to put on board a ship. Unfortunately it struck one of the worst winter storms that we had this last winter and the truck went off the road at Kaikoura. That shows that life does rarely goes to plan. Having said that the people who were responsible for it put in place the back-up procedures, got new bait down there, got it on the ship on time, got it down there and carried out the programme.

Q: If you’d been risk averse, as opposed to risk aware, I take it that you wouldn’t have committed to the project in the first place?

A: No, risk averse is a situation where your caution overcomes attempts to try and do anything that is new or innovative.

Q: Presumably you’re also saying to yourself that you can’t afford to fail?

A: You’re saying to yourself that not only you can’t afford to fail, but the consequences of failure are such that it paralyses any other action.

Q: We’ve been talking about capacity building. It is something of a buzz phrase, but it is also an important issue. How do you go about developing a team with a will to succeed?

A: You take it from the point of view of developing a culture amongst the people who are involved with the whole project. They are both excited by it, enthused by it and want to make it happen, but you need more than that. You need a lot more than that. The Department of Conservation had a very tragic event in 1995, which resulted in the deaths of 15 young people including one of our staff. It was an event that occurred as a result of what was at the time called systematic failure or systemic failure. There were certainly major failures in systems, but also it may well have been a cultural issue involved where things were being done out of enthusiasm. You can argue that you’ve got to do things from a sense of enthusiasm but you’ve also got to do things from a sense of professionalism.

Professionalism is about standards, it is about good science, it is about good practical experience. This all comes together in a group that understands all those issues, that understand the risks, that manages the risks, recognises that those risks may not even be manageable and then makes the judgement. We understand that we are nevertheless going to take that risk. We have done everything that we can to cover it.

Q: You mentioned this experience and I think we all know what it is. The interview in the video mentioned learning lessons from previous similar projects. What does an organisation have to do to incorporate that learning environment into its systems? Pete Hodgson spoke this morning about the process of continuous learning and turning the Public Service into a constant learning environment. How do you do that?

A: That is a challenge for every senior manager in the Public Service. In our case it was a question of revamping and putting in place new systems. It wasn’t simply a systems thing. You’ve got to look at all aspects of the organisation or entity that is involved in this effort. That involves the people, the skills they have, the general strategy you have for going forward with your systems and your standards. Above all you’ve also got to ensure that you imbue the organisation with a culture that is based on professionalism, high standards and a willingness or enthusiasm to succeed.

Ian Fraser: Thank you, Hugh.

Panel discussion with the six case study managers

Ian Fraser wound up this conference session with a panel discussion with these six case managers. The first question was answered in detail by one panel member. Her response is recorded below. The panel’s responses to the other questions have been listed as bullet points.

Ian Faser asked the panel how central government responds to the notion of risk awareness as opposed to risk aversion and the consequences if managers fail.

Enid Leighton from the Ngati Awa Service Academy gave a full reply to this question.

The Ngati Awa Service Acadamy was put to me as being a huge risk, not only for Government but also for the officials who supported the programme. It was because it works to a cycle and it is the election cycle. When you’re trying to evaluate a programme like this we want it in terms of the community, evaluated on a qualitative level. When you work to a short period of time, which is what we do in terms of the election cycle it turns into quantitative measurements and it turns into outputs. We would like it done as qualitative outcomes. So in terms of risk, at the end of the day it comes back to numbers in terms of quantitative collection. How many numbers achieved this? How many numbers achieved that? At the outset government officials were saying to us that we needed to have numbers here, we needed to have numbers there.

We knew from the outset in the first year that we would fail. Basically we were asking the government officials that supported the programme to understand that in the first year they would not get the quantitative results that they required. They were backing a horse that was telling them it was not going to achieve the first year outcomes. They backed us because we believe we have a solution that does require longer-term qualitative measurements. WINZ put in a researcher for an entire year to help us at the end of one year to substantiate at least the ability for further evaluation. Otherwise we were unable to give the Government the numbers that required to get them out of failure.

The other question was whether it was worth doing. To be risk averse in education means that you are leaving the failure that is in the system there. There is huge failure in our current State education system. We fail a whole lot of the kids that we are supposed to serve. If we’re risk averse we’re just saying, that’s OK. I don’t feel that’s OK. It’s just horrible.

Other panel members commented on the importance of taking risks at times and that it is encouraging when the Ministers are prepared to take a risk also.

Ian Fraser asked panel members about balancing innovation against the core values of reliability and stability. He asked whether it was true that those working outside the core Public Service are asking the Public Service to gallop along with them at their speed.

Panel members’ responses:

• It is important to back creative and innovative people in the community.
• There is still the need to deliver on a purchase agreement, the need to balance that.
• The ‘how’ is the important thing - where you work with the community, listening to the community.
• There is discipline involved when using or giving out public money meaning we have to act responsibly.
• It is useful to pilot a project, use a control group. Ministers, managers and the wider community are more accepting if you can demonstrate something through a control group. Test, make changes and present again.
• The bottom line is always Treasury requirements but it shouldn’t all depend on that. It is all about working together, shared values and honesty, being up front. Improved communication comes about through shared values. We all want winners, creative and innovative solutions to make us, our department and ultimately our Minister look good.

Ian Fraser asked what the road blocks were to collaboration and co-ordination, to more successfully and expansively developing a whole of government approach.

Panel members’ responses

• It is more than whole of Government, it is the whole of New Zealand. Innovation comes from all of us.
• One idea is an innovation fund to be disbursed regionally so that it’s not all controlled from Wellington – regional needs differ.
• Make sure collaboration is not a masque for centralisation.
• Keep people, informed.
• Often the solutions are dependent on a range of government agencies working together. However, not all government agencies have decision-making at the regional level. This is frustrating. Sometimes only half the agencies can be represented at the regional level when discussing a project. We need to make sure that all agencies can make decisions and commit resources at the regional level .

New Zealand State Services Commission