Wish you were here?

Much of the language used and aspirations conveyed by Mr Rennie sounded familiar to followers of the UK’s civil service reform agenda. However, Mr Rennie’s presentation (and the response by Mark Lowcock, permanent secretary at the Department for International Development, and head of a working group on accountability arrangements in Whitehall), also illustrated some notable differences between how the two systems work. First is the very existence of the State Services Commissioner (and the Commission he heads). The Commissioner is “appointer, reappointer and disappointer” of agency chief executives (permanent secretary equivalents) across the system. Cabinet has a formal veto over his appointment recommendations, but this has been exercised just once in 25 years. The Commissioner is placed at arm’s length from the political leadership. The current NZ government considered whether to combine the positions of Commissioner with the head of the Prime Ministers’ department, but decided that this would send the wrong signal so maintained the existing structure. A central function of the Commissioner is to set performance expectations for departmental heads. New Zealand has learnt that setting too many priorities detracts from the effectiveness and impact of the performance management system. A new streamlined approach centres on the central objectives of serving ministers, people management, financial management, and delivering core business (policy implementation). The system has also evolved to place greater weight on supporting departmental leaders to improve, rather than simply assessing performance in a transactional fashion. New Zealand also emphasises the ‘stewardship’ responsibilities of the public service, which the Institute for Government has previously argued should become a more central function of senior officials in the UK. Encouragingly, Mr Lowcock confirmed that the delayed 2014-15 performance objectives will include explicit reference to the stewardship as well as collective leadership roles of permanent secretaries. These objectives were subsequently published and are discussed elsewhere on our blog. Stewardship in the New Zealand context includes being prepared for a change of government, but also covers functions such as taking responsibility for the longer-term organisational health and continuous improvement of government. Mr Rennie described stewardship as akin to investment portfolio management, with pay offs coming on different timescales. Chief executives have to invest in activities that will bring pay-offs over the life-time of a minister’s tenure, the life-time of a particular administration, and over the longer term. This is a proactive function – public service leaders in Wellington do not await the next minister to take an interest in reform. Mr Rennie described how the public service would prepare advice for a new administration on how it could reform or streamline the machinery of government. In New Zealand, Mr Rennie underlined, the central players in public service reform always include the Treasury and its chief executive, without whose support no reform would succeed. Consequently, the State Services Commission, Treasury and PM’s department work very closely together to improve and better coordinate the central corporate leadership (which the Institute for Government has argued is an area for improvement in Whitehall too). Part of Rennie’s own leadership role is to step in and help resolve tensions between ministers and their chief executives – if necessary by changing the departmental leadership. As far as accountability to Parliament is concerned, Mr Rennie admitted the relative weakness of arrangements in New Zealand, where parliamentary scrutiny is seen as ineffective. By contrast, Mr Lowcock noted that he “never feels under-appraised” when appearing before Margaret Hodge and the Public Accounts Committee, and confirmed that the Government plans to strengthen the direct accountability to Parliament of lead officials for major projects.