Corporate and Executive Services

Commentary

Given the amount of spending on this function, we should improve our understanding of value for money and drive performance. The 31 agencies participating in this benchmarking exercise spend $189.3 million each year on the Corporate and Executive Services (CES) function, which is roughly equal to annual expenditure on office accommodation. Building our understanding of the cost and quality of these services across government supports a robust discussion about whether or not there are meaningful opportunities for improvement or savings.

The findings of this and other reports suggest we can lift performance through greater collaboration. Larger agencies continue to be significantly more efficient in delivering CES, showing the impact of fixed costs on small agencies and suggesting that leveraging scale across government can reduce costs.

Work is underway to strengthen management and performance in the larger service areas. Recent activity in the three largest service groups in this function - communications, legal services, and information management - is described below.[54]

Communications

By Michael Player, Chair of Communications - heads of communications group of the core public sector

Better Administrative & Support Services (BASS) measurement provides a useful start in understanding the performance of communication services across government. Since the last BASS report, New Zealand Public Service communicators have collaborated to build a more detailed common metric set, including a revised and recently piloted Management Practice Indicator (MPI).

We can use the annual administrative and support (A&S) service benchmarking exercise to implement these measures, and given the low level of maturity in measuring the communications function globally, we have the potential to be international leaders in performance management for communications services. This significant achievement will require working together to refine the metric set in successive reporting periods, and it will support a stronger understanding and transparency of the communications function and management discipline.

Information Management

By Greg Goulding, Chief Archivist and General Manager, Archives New Zealand

Recordkeeping practices must change to support better, faster decision making and increased collaboration across agencies. As agencies deliver better services for less, they change the structure and technology for service delivery. Public offices must consider their recordkeeping requirements in this changing environment. There are five key themes that Archives New Zealand is focused on as it supports agency success:

• Continuity of government information through change
• Securing today's digital information for tomorrow (being implemented by the Government Digital Archive programme)
• Disaster recovery and business continuity for information management
• Coordinated, efficient and well implemented disposal of public records
• Capturing the nation's memory.

Legal Services

By Philip Griffiths, Programme Director, Government Legal Service (GLS)

The Government Legal Services programme has two work streams: one for developing capability and one for delivering efficiencies. Thecapability work stream will support collaboration, including shared tools and resources and consistent competencies and training for public sector legal practitioners. The efficiency work stream will leverage scale and reduce duplication, including aggregated procurement for legal publishing services (through GLS) and external legal services through the Ministry of Economic Development’s Procurement Reform Programme.