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Perspectives

When to use and not use representative deliberative processes

Drawing on the evidence collected and existing scholarship, this OECD report explores when deliberative processes have been shown to work well and when they do not.

  • 11 Mar 2021
  • 2021
  • Best Practice
  • Democracy
  • Engagement
  • Wellington

Stitches in time? Realising the value of futures and foresight

This introduces you to some of the key ideas in a report published by the RSA (Royal Society for Arts) in the UK, funded by PERU (Policy Evaluation Research Unit and Metropolis). The RSA says “We invite you to be part of this change. Join our community” This is why we attach the link to the full document. Authors: Adanna Shallowe, Aleksandra Szymczyk, Ella Firebrace, Ian Burbidge and James Morrison

  • 11 Mar 2021
  • 2021
  • Best Practice
  • Futures Planning
  • Futures Thinking
  • Wellington

Ministry of Possibilities - UAE

The United Arab Emirates has a Ministry of Possibilities Our two countries are very different - but all governments are trying to tackle the difficult challenges, and the UAE have chosen the following way. There may be some ideas in here to spark our thinking in New Zealand.

  • 04 Feb 2021
  • 2021
  • Best Practice
  • Futures Planning
  • Innovation
  • Wellington

Climate Change Action Ideas

Here we share two examples from the summary of 100 great ideas for climate action collated and published by Apolitical. The link to the full, very large, article is at the bottom of this page. We think this is pretty inspiring, especially as we face the challenges of the climate change commission report. We hope you find something of interest for your sector.

  • 04 Feb 2021
  • 2021
  • Best Practice
  • Climate Change
  • Sustainability
  • Wellington

Employee Performance Management in the Public Sector: How it works in reality

Modern employee performance management, which concerns the day-to-day actions to manage employee performance, is effective when done well, but is often done poorly.

This article offers initial insights offer a glimpse into what our public service people-leaders are saying. We look forward to sharing more to help make modern performance management real, not a bureaucratic chore.

  • 01 Feb 2021
  • 2021
  • Best Practice
  • Leadership
  • Public Service
  • Wellington

Ethics and Leadership in the Public Service

IPANZ is committed to exploring and enhancing the ethical culture of the public service. Hence, we will be sharing information and insights about ethics in the next few months. As always, we welcome the views of IPANZ members.

  • 28 Jan 2021
  • 2021
  • Best Practice
  • Ethics
  • Public Service
  • Wellington

Well-being Policy and Practice: Wales and New Zealand

New Zealand and Wales both place well-being at the heart of public policy but have followed very different approaches. This note provides a brief comparison.

  • 26 Jan 2021
  • 2021
  • Best Practice
  • Public Service
  • Wellbeing
  • Wellington

Types of Ethical Leadership

TYPES of ETHICAL LEADERSHIP (as explained by Karin Lasthuizen who is the Brian Picot Chair of Ethical leadership at the Victoria university Business School at an AOG leaders Integrity Forum in 2018). Here is an example of the different roles that a leader needs to play when trying to influence ethical behaviour in the workplace.

  • 26 Jan 2021
  • 2021
  • Best Practice
  • Ethics
  • Leadership
  • Public Service
  • Wellington

Political Acuity

Being politically savvy is an important skill for public servants. Here are some ideas on some of the things to think about is as you develop.

  • 19 Jan 2021
  • 2021
  • Best Practice
  • Public Service

Achieving Digital Inclusion

In the April 2020 edition of our Public Sector Journal Laurence Millar talks about ways of achieving digital inclusion - the challenge of digital inclusion has become urgently into prominence. Laurence has prepared this video for IPANZ members to follow up on his article. He talks about the challenge of digital inclusion, what is needed, why exclusion happens; he will finish by looking beyond COVID. Shocked by the stark reality of digital reliance, surely the public service must act decisively.

  • 14 Jan 2021
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Wellington

Can Health Technology Foster Greater Resilience in Our Health Systems?

Can health technology foster greater resilience in our health care systems? What lessons have we learned from the covid-19 pandemic about the role of technology in healthcare provision? In a summer workshop hosted by CSaP in partnership with Member of Parliament George Freeman and experts from the health policy and technology policy sectors, we explored the future potential of health technologies in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic. This was the second in a series of three workshops which seek to explore aspects of how institutions and policy approaches focused on health and the economy can be strengthened and support innovation following the covid-19 pandemic.

  • 08 Dec 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Innovation
  • Technology

Q&A with Lil Anderson of Te Arawhiti

SHENAGH GLEISNER talks to Lil Anderson of Te Arawhiti about what public servants are doing and what they can do to change Māori Crown relations.

  • 30 Nov 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Leadership
  • Maori-Crown Relationships
  • Public Servant
  • Public Service

Taking Stewardship Seriously

JONATHAN BOSTON of the School of Government, Victoria University, asks how the idea of stewardship will be applied. For public servants, exercising wise stewardship is mandatory; it is not optional. Morally, it has long been a relevant and important obligation. Legally, it has been a specific and significant duty since the passing of the State Sector Amendment Act in 2013. Recently, the Public Service Act 2020 has strengthened the stewardship obligations of public service chief executives and their staff. It is now critical for these obligations to be taken seriously and accorded a high priority.

  • 30 Nov 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Principles and Values
  • Public Service
  • Public Service Reform
  • Stewardship

Exciting Times for Collective Action

JO MILLER, chief executive of Hutt City Council, imagines a world where collaboration is the norm. Compassion, communication, clarity of purpose, collaboration, and a focus on citizens were at the heart of New Zealand’s rightly lauded response to COVID-19. We did well as a team of 5 million, with great leadership and central–local partnerships. Here in the Hutt Valley, councils, iwi, businesses, voluntary organisations, and communities collaborated to problem-solve and innovate for the common good.

  • 30 Nov 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Collaboration
  • Engagement
  • Local Government

Ki te hoe tātou

DR MIKE ROSS (Ngāti Hauā) sees a way forward in building an Aotearoa public service. Tēnā koutou katoa Working in the New Zealand public service is a noble occupation. You’re appointed by merit to work with elected governments to build a better New Zealand for all its people, serving citizens without political bias, with openness and transparency, and providing free and frank advice. The integrity and legitimacy of our public service has been recognised in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index as the world’s least corrupt public sector (first equal with Denmark). Tino pai! (Well done us!)

  • 13 Nov 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Maori-Crown Relationships
  • Public Service
  • Wellbeing

Management Behaviours and their Impact on Resilience

People can thrive personally and professionally under a good boss. Unfortunately, under a bad, or even just mediocre boss, their resilience can be reduced.

IPANZ Executive Director Shenagh Gleisner talked with Geoff Plimmer from Victoria University and Esme Franken from the Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. They are undertaking research looking at resilience in the workplace, including thinking about management behaviours that enhance or hinder resilience. Here are some emerging findings from their interviews and focus groups.

  • 13 Nov 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Leadership
  • Wellbeing

Monitoring the Implementation of the Public Service Act's Principles and Values

A key plank of the IPANZ strategy is to “ensure the espoused aspiration to demonstrate public sector ethics, values and principles is fully reflected in the lived experience of public sector professionals”. The day-to-day demonstration of these principles in action will be achieved by steady culture change, support, inspiration and modelling by everyone. However, progress will presumably need to be tracked and monitored for learning and improvement to take place. We were therefore interested to talk with Simon Chapple of Victoria University about his ideas on potential ways of monitoring implementation over time.

  • 06 Oct 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Principles and Values
  • Public Service Reform

New York City’s Open Streets Programme

New York City’s Open Streets Programme is closed to many who need it the most, writes Amy Howden-Chapman. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 1 million New Yorkers could not access a park within 10 minutes’ walk from their homes. Like millions of other New Yorkers, I live in an apartment with no garden or balcony. To stay sane and get through the stress and sadness of the pandemic, I needed to be able to spend time outdoors – to see the sky. In March, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he would close some streets to cars and allow them to be “open” to residents so people could use their street like they would a front yard. However, the initial Open Streets pilot programme consisted of just four streets (1.6 miles) to serve a city of over 8 million residents. The pilot programme lasted just over a week.

  • 05 Oct 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice

The Case for Mesh Governance

COVID-19 has put intense pressure on governments around the world. Aside the tragic loss of life, the pandemic has also acted as a natural experiment in best-practice governance. We can learn from the variety of governmental responses in order to perform better when confronted by similar challenges. There is, however, controversy about which lessons we should learn. Advocates of centralised government point to our experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand as proof that centralisation ensures efficiency and clarity. Meanwhile, advocates of decentralisation underline how important the semi-autonomy of states and cities has been in the United States, where clear federal co-ordination has been sorely lacking.Mulgan argues that neither of these impulses is correct

  • 05 Oct 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Collaboration
  • Public Service

A Journey to Enhance Cultural Competence

A number of the readers of our Public Sector Journal have been inspired by the journey of Emerge Aotearoa to better meet the needs of Māori. Barbara Disley talks of the vital importance of leadership (from the board and management), how strategy and values are lynch pins, how partnering with Iwi is essential, and how developing Māori leaders in the organisation is key to sustaining change. There are lessons for everyone in hearing about this journey, and how it is delivering outcomes.

  • 29 Sep 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Cultural Competence
  • Wellington

Futures Terminology

In everyday conversation, people talk about ‘the future’ in the singular, as though there was one future we were heading towards – but myriads of decisions, big and small are being made, every moment of every day. As each decision is made, it takes some futures out of contention and steers us towards other futures that are now more able to come into being. Since the 1990s, various futurists, including Dr Joseph Voros, Senior Lecturer in Strategic Foresight at Swinburne University of Technology, have developed a wider set of terms for distinguishing between different types of futures. They are each described briefly in this article.

  • 15 Sep 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Futures Thinking

The Role of Science in Policy

The government’s COVID-19 response has shown how crucial science advice is in informing policy decisions. With
so much science discussed in the press and social media, trusted science advice is hugely important for all policy. But who selects and interprets science for the government and how does it inform policy decisions? MARGARET MCLACHLAN found out.

  • 02 Sep 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Policy Advice
  • Research
  • Science

Why Data Empowerment Matters

SAM YOON of Deloitte advocates a different approach to data protection. With the ascension of technology, privacy policy makers are scrambling to balance the utility of such technologies with individual data rights. Appropriate policies should focus on empowering users with their data, rather than punitive measures to limit data usage.

  • 02 Sep 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Big Data
  • Information Technology
  • Privacy

In The Public Service? Artificial Intelligence and Government

Artificial intelligence presents some marvellous opportunities for the public service. SEAN AUDAIN gives a summary of some of these along with the unique challenges.

  • 02 Sep 2020
  • 2020
  • Artifical Intelligence
  • Best Practice
  • Information Technology
  • Innovation

Keeping the Public's Trust and Confidence

SHENAGH GLEISNER talks to the Auditor-General, John Ryan, about public accountability and trust and confidence. The Auditor-General’s website often contains challenging ideas. In late 2019, they wrote about public accountability with a focus on the trust and confidence of New Zealanders in the public service. They also drew attention to the focus on stewardship in the public service legislation and considered how public accountability could change accordingly.

  • 02 Sep 2020
  • 2020
  • Best Practice
  • Integrity
  • Trust & Confidence