A corner of a house may be seen and examined; not so the corners of the heart

01/11/2017

After twenty years as a public servant, I now have the luxury of working for myself with some great clients, trying to finish a PhD on free and frank advice and observing the beltway from Rangiora. So here’s my take on what the new Government means for the public sector. The headline is this – it’s not business-as-usual.

While the BPS results framework has been incredibly helpful, the central area of reform will need to be improving service and delivery to citizens. In a rapidly changing technology and information environment, this is about delivering a complex set of services where there is no one size fits all while at the same time developing a whole of government approach that values citizens – not customers (big difference in there).

Further to that, the public sector will need to be more responsive to the aspirations of its front-line staff and citizens. This Government will find it hard to achieve better results without encouraging and supporting the staff who engage at the front-line and other parts of the system. That means less focus on the beltway managerial drones and more on the leadership and professional skills that front up day-in-day-out in our cities, towns and small communities. I expect to see a big focus on collective employment agreements. I also expect to see the voices of the professions coming back into public policy.

Turning the face of the system towards citizens – as distinct from customers – will require new ways of thinking and relating. Officials need to see’ citizens’ in a broader frame encompassing how and why personal and private information is stored. The rights of individuals and their communities, and their obligations to one another, will emerge again. The ‘how’ officials work with citizens, and vulnerable communities will be as important as the ‘why’ they work with some people, not others.

Public policy discussions will need to consider local Government, innovation, and responsiveness to Maori, Pasifika, and migrants and refugees. For too long, public policy for these groups has been contained, marginalised and organised into silence. In particular, with local Government and Iwi, new delivery models will need some rethinking and redesign.

On the innovation front, public servants and those working in the broader State sector will have about eighteen months to two years to enjoy a new government’s mandate. The best senior officials will leverage this flexibility to try ideas. It should be possible to test whether the climate for innovation has
improved in a year.

Finally, there is something to be said for transparency and open government. Here are some initial thoughts. High enthusiasm for evermore openness and transparency is heroic but does little to build public trust. On the contrary, trust appears to recede when transparency is advanced. Perhaps the more critical reflection is that officials need to avoid deception rather than secrecy. Don’t be alarmed – I am not accusing anyone. I simply mean stopping the flood of unsorted information and misinformation that provides little insight but confusion and can only be sorted and assessed by experts. It means writing reports that are easy to read and understand. It means not underplaying sensitive information. It means not letting policy people get away with blandly uninformative reports and references or evasive and uninformative statements that substitute for truth-telling. Transparency is not just about visibility – it is about accessibility for citizens.

He kokonga whare e kitea, he kokonga ngākau e kore e kitea.