Assessing Organisational Health and Capability

To succeed, our organisation needs strong leaders, a clear sense of direction, and a constant form of communicating the outcomes that are to be achieved. We continually strive for a healthy, vibrant and capable organisation with all the appropriate resources to contribute to our desired outcomes, fulfil our role and move resolutely towards the overall purpose of supporting Māori to achieve Whānau Ora and exercise tino rangatiratanga. Ultimately this will ensure our success.

With this in mind, Te Puni Kōkiri continues to focus on improvement in critical areas as follows:

• Capitalise on strong external relationships that enable us to provide quality advice and deliver on our responsibilities in the most effective way;
• Through succession planning and secondments, encourage and develop senior managers aspiring to leadership positions;
• Maintain the systems, structures, and processes, including a dynamic investment strategy and policy statement in one central document that enable us to be a performance-based organisation focused on “best practice”;
• Employ excellent people who have top quality intellect, commitment, balance individual and team work and work with a passion for achieving Māori success; and
• Engage effectively to promote and communicate the outcomes for which Te Puni Kōkiri is responsible.

People Capability

Our current People Capability Strategy runs to 2010, and during 2009/10 we will engage with a variety of stakeholders, including staff, to develop a new People Capability Strategy through to 2016.

We continue to be committed to making Te Puni Kōkiri a place where people aspire to work, are able to develop and can make a difference. Our People Capability Strategy will be informed by our Values, our 2008 staff climate survey and the public service context within which we operate. We will incorporate our remuneration, employment relations, learning and development and succession management planning into our People Capability Strategy.

In March 2010 our Collective Employment Agreement with the Public Service Association (PSA) expires. We will negotiate a new collective agreement that meets both our new People Capability Strategy and government expectations as expressed in the “Government’s Expectations for Pay and Employment Conditions in the State Sector”.

While we develop our new People Capability Strategy we will continue to use the key indicators of organisational health that we have used in previous years. This will ensure consistent indicators are applied while at the same time developing any suitable alternatives.

Key indicators of our organisational health will be drawn from:

• Staff turnover;
• Number of vacancies filled by internal promotion;
• Number of staff disputes/grievances lodged against us; and
• Staff engagement survey and staff exit survey results.

Communications

It is Te Puni Kōkiri’s intention to be a more effective communicator and we aim to proactively promote the activities and achievements of Te Puni Kōkiri. Publications such as Kōkiri and E-Kōkiri are an effective means of advising the most relevant, timely, and factual information to staff and stakeholders alike. A further communiqué - Kōtuitui is our main means of internal networking that aims to link us all in our work by sharing success stories. We continue to focus on our shift toward e-based communication tools.

Maintaining an Evaluation Programme

Since our last Statement of Intent, we have made significant gains in achieving the objectives of our internal evaluation function. Most importantly, we have embedded a culture of internal evaluation in the Ministry, and delivered on and further reviewed our Evaluation Strategy. On-going work includes:

• Maintaining evaluation capacity – to manage and co-ordinate the evaluation programme, provide evaluation advice and commission and implement high quality evaluative activity;
• Increase evaluation capability – to ensure that people involved in direction setting, planning, implementation and delivery know when and how to promote evaluative activity, how to commission and manage it and how to use results; and
• Continue to enhance systems and processes – to ensure that evaluation requirements and tools are built into all aspects of the management cycle and that the results of evaluation activity are communicated in a way that informs decision making.

Energy Efficiency

The NZ Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy requires: “government to demonstrate sustainable outcomes in its vehicle fleet, its buildings, its purchase of equipment and consumables and the behaviour of public service employees.”

The Strategy targets include energy use reductions, workplace travel plans and vehicle carbon emissions.

Targets include:

• achievement of a 10% reduction in energy use per FTE of premises occupied by the end of 2012, compared with the 2006/07 baseline.
• reduce consumption of energy-intensive consumables such as paper by 10% by the end of 2010.
• Workplace travel plan in place by the end of 2010 aiming for an aggregate 15% reduction in kilometres travelled, including by air, from the 2006/07 baseline.
• reducing average CO2 emissions per vehicle in the fleet by 25% by the end of 2012 based on the 2006/07 baseline.

Development Goals for the State Services

• Become Employer of Choice
• Provide Networked State Services
• Demonstrate Value for Money
• Deliver Coordinated State Agencies
• Provide Accessible State Services
• Engender Trust in State Services

The six State Services Development Goals provide focus for the efforts of all state services agencies to improve performance and increase New Zealander’s confidence in the system as a whole.

The shared goal is to deliver a system of world class professional State Services serving the government of the day and meeting the needs of New Zealanders.

Te Puni Kōkiri recognises that investment in the six goals can be mutually reinforcing. Progress in improving performance toward each goal can make it easier to reach the published milestones in the others. For example, lower staff turnover and better staff engagement are both indicators of progress toward the Employer of Choice goal. These gains also contribute to achieving Value for Money. Similarly, better Accessibility for Māori to state services and evidence of improved Value for Money will both contribute to New Zealanders trust (and confidence) in their State Services.

Te Puni Kōkiri can and does contribute in these ways to a stronger State Services system and better performance. A stronger, better Connected, Networked and Accessible system of State Services can, in turn, also contribute strongly to the outcomes that are central to Te Puni Kōkiri.

Te Puni Kōkiri outputs will include continued investment in activities that support each of the six goals, with particular emphasis this year on demonstrating value for money.

The Relationship and Information Wahanga contributes through its regional networks to the State Sector goal of “Provide Accessible State Services”. This is done through brokering relationships between whānau, hapū, iwi, Māori communities and organisations with government, including local government that can assist Māori to have greater participation, inclusion and access to government resources and services. This is of particular importance in the current economic climate given the likelihood of disparate impacts on Māori.

Assessing our Cost-Effectiveness

Te Puni Kōkiri will continue to ensure that provision of all services to Ministers and Stakeholders alike, is provided efficiently and effectively through:

• a sharpened focus on delivery of the Governments objectives at all levels throughout the organisation, from strategy to wāhanga work programmes, to individual performance agreements;
• sound investment in people, processes and systems;
• benchmarking using the Common Measurements Tool; and
• an internal review programme to identify and implement efficiency and effectiveness improvements in programme management, relationships and information and corporate compliance.

The actual assessment of cost-effectiveness of policy work remains challenging, given that the outcomes we are pursuing are dependent on a wide range of contributors. However, we will, over time, benchmark and measure the cost-effectiveness of achieving our impact measures. Alongside this, the costs of policy production are continually monitored to ensure that the Governments objective to improve value for money (VFM) within the State Sector is being adhered to.

Our VFM Principles moving forward have been documented and made available to all Te Puni Kōkiri staff who have clear understanding of what is required.

Ko ngā Mātāpono “Whai-hua a Putea” o Te Puni Kōkiri e hua ai/The Te Puni Kōkiri ‘Value for Money’ Principles are:

• Me hāngai ngāmahi a Te Puni Kōkiri ki ngā mahinga matua a Te Kawanatanga/ Ensuring everything Te Puni Kōkiri does contributes to a Government priority;
• E tika ana te utu mō ngā mahinga a Te Puni Kōkiri/Ensuring the cost of Te Puni Kōkiri activities are appropriate; and
• Me whai-hua a Te Puni Kōkiri i roto i āna mahinga katoa/Ensuring what Te Puni
  Kōkiri does demonstrates real value.

Throughout 2009/10 our focus on VFM will involve:

• Discontinuing any activity or programme that does not contribute to a Government priority;
• Benchmarking Te Puni Kōkiri costs;
• Reducing costs and/or enhancing productivity and effectiveness, and seeking greater efficiency;
• Monitoring and measuring our effectiveness; and
• Reviewing our effectiveness where necessary.

Additionally, Te Puni Kōkiri will continue its overall evaluation of the Māori Potential Fund and other programmes to demonstrate their contribution to Te Puni Kōkiri’s high level outcomes. To be confident that the Māori Potential Fund is operating effectively, we will ensure that:

• investments made through the fund are aligned to real needs;
• investments are well designed and likely to improve outcomes;
• the quantity, quality and coverage of investments align with our intervention logic;
• near-term results and outcomes are improving in the areas anticipated; and
• change has resulted from the investments¹.

Finally, Te Puni Kōkiri shall continue to work with Audit NZ, the Treasury, and the State Services Commission to improve performance measurement as a key means of supporting good decision making, collaboration and co-ordinated state sector agencies, as well as meeting accountability requirements.

Endnote
¹ State Services Commission et al (2003) Learning from Evaluative Activity - Enhancing Performance through Outcome-focused Management, prepared by the Steering Group for the Managing for Outcomes Roll-out 2004-05, November 2003, p7.

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