PIF System Level Findings: Better strategy and role clarity lifts capability

01/08/2020

The third quirk speaks directly to what lifts the capability of the public service. In short, coherency in strategy and clarity about the agency’s role in the broader system appears to be positively correlated with capability (see diagram below).

The strategy and role dimension involve ensuring each agency can clearly articulate its future direction to Ministers, their staff, and their partners and stakeholders in a way that is consistent with its statutory purpose.

This dimension is also about ensuring that every agency has an operating model that efficiently delivers on the strategy, as everyone knows their roles and responsibilities.

Finally, this dimension also includes how the agency works with its Minister so their Minister can work with others. This consists of the efficiency of servicing Ministers and the quality of free and frank advice.

Te Rā Whakamana: Operational Capac …

Schick, then Ryan and Gill (2011), and Tenbensel et al (2026) This week, the series reads three pieces of local implementation scholarship alongside one another, written across the better part of three decades and from quite different vantage points. There is Allen Schick’s 1996 review of the reforms, and the warnings it carried. There is Bill Ryan and Derek Gill’s later account, written i...

Administrative Burden: The Woman …

When the State Designs for a Person Who Does Not Exist This is the fourth post in a series about what it actually costs to navigate the state. Last month, I examined how burdens fall hardest on the least resourced. I also introduced the research on “deservingness”. Today, I turn to gender. The hypothesis that the unpaid labour of navigating the state falls disproportionately on women, and ...

Loose Threads: The Other Allison

E te whānau. A longer Loose Thread this week, prompted by a moment in Beijing that has sent half the commentariat scrambling for their Thucydides. Graham Allison is having his moment in the foreign policy sun. But the Allison I want to talk about is the one almost nobody remembers. This post starts with his trap, notes who was already using it, and then turns to an argument about gover...