Better Delivery of Public Services
This Government is committed to meeting New Zealanders' expectations of modern public services, while at the same time recognising the ongoing pressures on taxpayers.
This Government has delivered within the budget commitments made to taxpayers. Figure 5 shows Budget operating initiatives in recent Budgets, and excludes revenue initiatives such as the Budget 2008 tax cuts. New spending allowances between 2003 and 2008 tended to be large relative to the size of the economy, and even then were repeatedly exceeded. This resulted in the large increase in government spending which has placed great strains on the economy.
- Figure 5 - Stated allowance versus Budget operating initiatives 2003 to 2010
- Source: The Treasury
The Government is focusing new spending on a few areas of greatest need. In Budget 2010, three-quarters of the $1.1 billion operating allowance, around $800 million, has been allocated to improving health and education services and lifting science and innovation.
As well as a focus on delivering good value from new spending, we also want to drive increased value from the $70 billion of existing spending. As in Budget 2009, we told public sector chief executives to look harder at existing programmes, and think harder about how to deliver high-quality services more efficiently. This change in culture was demonstrated by only 30 requests for new operating funding being submitted in Budget 2010, as opposed to 714 budget bids in 2008. This focus on getting more from existing baselines has also resulted in $1.8 billion being freed up over the next four years for priority areas, including within health and education spending.
Figure 6 shows how reprioritisation in Budgets 2009 and 2010, over the comparable years 2010/11 to 2013/14, has allowed the Government to deliver significantly more in priority areas than would be possible with the budget allowances alone.
- Figure 6 - Reprioritised and new spending in Budgets 2009 and 2010
- Source: The Treasury
The Government will continue to support this drive to get better public services across a number of fronts. This will include reducing the cost and improving the efficiency and quality of back office functions such as human resources, finance, ICT and procurement through the Better Administrative and Support Services programme. We will encourage agencies to use performance tools such as the Performance Improvement Framework to improve their own capability and for external assessment. We will be encouraging agencies to look hard at how they carry out their business - including opportunities to contract out where that makes sense, using contestable processes to compare prices and looking hard at the capital they use. These initiatives form part of a long-term strategy to improve the performance of the State sector.
