Organisational health and capability

The global economic situation and the need for increased productivity means the Public Service needs to manage to do more with less. This includes finding new, smarter ways of working, reviewing our processes and systems end-to-end and, where necessary, reviewing our structures to move 'back office' resources to the frontline.

Strong financial management

Like everyone else, we have to live within a budget and we have a variety of demands on how we prioritise our spending. We're committed to delivering value for money as part of our ongoing business strategy. To ensure we have strong financial management we regularly review our expenditure and our programmes with the help of a dedicated financing committee.

Value for Money (VfM)
We have implemented an ongoing VfM review to meet identified cost pressures (primarily wage and rental costs) over the four-year period to June 2012. We have identified at least 80 per cent of the potential savings identified in the 2008 VfM initiative and we are committed to finding the balance.

We have established a permanently resourced VfM Programme Unit that is supported by an externally-chaired Advisory Board. This Advisory Board contains other external members who bring specific expertise to the Ministry's VfM approach.

We have identified a range of productivity and efficiency enhancements to ensure we are financially sustainable, including:

• the increased use of technology and online services
• business process re-engineering
• delivery strategies to get the appropriate mix of insourcing and outsourcing, supported by enhanced property strategies.

We developed a significant change proposal that, in addition to delivering on our value for money commitments, will:

• strengthen frontline service delivery by re-balancing resources away from national office and back office functions and towards frontline service delivery
• simplify organisational structures within our business lines, making them more transparent.

Our principles

• Put people first

• Team up to make a bigger difference

• Act with courage and respect

• Empower others to act

• Create new solutions

• Are, can do

• Honour achievement.

Above all, we do the right thing for New Zealanders.

Developing our people and future leaders

To provide our staff with the broad skill-sets required for working with individuals and families, and with other organisations, we have introduced NZQA-recognised qualifications.

We support our social workers through education and registration. More than 75 per cent of Child, Youth and Family field social work staff have a Level six or higher social work qualification (up two per cent from 2007/2008). Around 850 of our Child, Youth and Family staff are registered social workers, with a further 300 currently working towards social worker registration (an increase of 50 for both social workers and for those working towards social worker registrations from 2007/2008).

Effective management and leadership is key to achieving results

Our focus for leadership development and succession includes building talent pools for key roles. This includes accelerated development programmes for Māori and Pacific staff.

Identifying and developing the leadership

We identify and develop employees who will make great leaders:

• Early this year we selected 16 high-potential staff to participate in our new Emerging Leaders programme (ELP). Participants attend a programme of internal workshops and business change projects over nine to 12 months that will develop their skills and knowledge.
• Our Students, Seniors and Integrity Services service line introduced a Future Leaders Forum for staff at Service Manager or equivalent level. This helps to develop and strengthen leadership capability, builds a more robust senior leadership career path, and builds a greater depth of talent for succession. Participants receive individual assessments, tailored development plans, and coaching.
• We now have four accredited internal coaches who support our middle and senior managers through individual coaching and tailored development plans.
• The Ministry's Leadership Team takes an active role in reviewing the development needs of our senior managers. Our annual People Forum was held in June 2009 and was an opportunity for the Leadership Team to discuss our leaders' developmental progress.
• We currently have a small number of managers participating in leadership programmes through the Leadership Development Centre (LDC). These include the Public Sector Advanced Leadership programme and the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) Executive Masters and Fellows programmes.

NGO Leadership Development programme

In March 2009 we provided support to Pacific NGO service providers to build a leadership development programme for their sector. This will help to raise leadership capability across the wider sector.

Maintaining industrial relations

The Ministry is industrially stable. There was a reduction in overall recruitment across the Ministry in the 2008/2009 financial year. Staff turnover has dropped to under 10 per cent - the lowest it's been since the establishment of the Ministry in 2001.

In 2008/2009 we:

• supported major change initiatives in Work and Income, Child, Youth and Family, Students, Seniors and Integrity Services, and National Office that support government expectations to focus resources on providing frontline services
• commenced negotiations to renew the Child, Youth and Family PSA main staff collective agreement
• agreed to implement common leave provisions for Practice Leaders in Child, Youth and Family
• held the 2008/2009 remuneration ranges at the 2007/2008 levels set for National Office staff.

Equal employment opportunity

As a good employer, we are committed to offering equal employment opportunities.

One-half of all the Ministry's senior managers are female, 25 per cent of our staff identify as Mäori, 12 per cent as Pacific peoples, and 7 per cent as Asian. This means we are better able to understand, have access to, and help our diverse communities.

To contribute to demographic diversity, staff with the potential to be Mäori and Pacific leaders are invited to apply to take part in our Te Aratiatia programme. The programme is designed to prepare them for management roles. Te Aratiatia has been very successful to date: since 2002, almost 80 per cent of participants have been appointed to manager or more senior roles.

Our technology

Information and communication technology (ICT) is integral to our work and to achieving results. Technology underpins our ability to serve people through our extensive network of telephone contact centres, to support staff in face-to-face dealings with people and, increasingly, to deliver services directly over the internet. We are also in the middle of an extensive modernisation of our core infrastructure that will enable our workforce to become more mobile and collaborative, thereby enhancing productivity.

Modernising our capability

We have continued to improve our technology to support our case managers.

We have focused on a range of significant programmes to modernise our technological capability and to enhance our productivity. These include the following programmes:

Online Services
We completed the development of a Ministry e-transformation strategy. This strategy is about harnessing our systems and the online channel so we can increase our efficiency and effectiveness, and provide better services to clients.

Over the next year we are introducing a range of new online services for students, working age and older clients. We will also move a lot of transactional activity online so our frontline staff are freed up to work more intensively with clients and their families. These online services will mean:

• clients will be able to update personal details, declare income, and view payments and debt balances online
• online tools will provide information about how to get assistance and enable clients to self-assess their eligibility
• clients will be able to apply for some types of assistance over the internet, and to receive correspondence electronically
• employers will be able to list vacancies online and jobseekers will be able to apply for jobs online.

Voice Enabled Technology
In May this year we implemented an automated voice system called Voice Enabled Technology (VET) in our Work and Income contact centres. VET asks the identifying questions a customer service representative (CSR) usually asks. Through VET each caller is asked to declare their reason for calling up-front. This information appears, along with the identity information, in a screen pop-up for the CSR. This helps the CSR to greet the client in a more welcoming way and to focus more immediately on what the client needs. Using VET has resulted in a saving of eight seconds of average call-handling time for each call.

We have focused on three significant programmes to modernise our technological capability. These programmes include the following:

Telecommunications Services review
The Ministry appointed Gen-i as its preferred telecommunications and network supplier. We are now nearing the completion of a nationwide transition of networking infrastructure and services. More than 3,000 voice circuits have been switched.

Infrastructure Roadmap programme
We are undertaking a complete revamp of our standard desktop operating environment, and corporate email, file and print, and directory services.

SWIFTT and TRACE transformation
We are nearing the completion of the migration of our core benefit payment and debt management systems to a modern computing environment.
Technology strategies we are working on include:

• Client Channel Strategy - extending the reach of the Ministry to people through multi, digital channels that respond to different people's needs and are efficient, secure and reliable.
• Client Centric Case Management - consolidating client information into a unified view of our clients across the Ministry's service lines, and providing enhanced tools to enable client-centric business processes.
• Digital Content and Knowledge - creating a reliable, secure and accessible digital record from our client-related and corporate information and knowledge. A key part of this is the digitisation of client records, and IT is working with Work and Income on this. Another key element is to make our file management system secure and accessible to the whole organisation and to ensure we comply with legislative requirements for the preservation of official information. In the same vein, we want to ensure the content on our intranet is accurate and matches that in our file management system.
• Core Systems Transformation - the ongoing modernisation of our business applications so they will continue to be fully supportable, cost effective, and meet our emerging business needs. Key issues are the renewal of IT assets (software and hardware) and how to extend the life of our current assets given the potential costs of replacing our systems.
• Infrastructure Modernisation - ensuring the continuous uninterrupted delivery of critical business functions in a cost effective manner. Key focus areas are the synchronisation of devices, the better enablement of collaboration technologies like video conferencing, and more flexible access to technology.

eGovernment

We will undergo a technical proof of concept of the Government Logon Service (GLS) to understand how we can incorporate into our online services an all-of-government capability for citizens.

The Identity Verification Service will provide government agencies with a high level of confidence confirming the identity of the online user, while placing people in control of their transactions and protecting their privacy. We are active contributors to the steering and working groups for this project.

We comply with the State Services Commission's eGIF framework for e-Government interoperability, and we meet regularly with fellow eGIF participants.

Our property

As the Ministry has expanded its services, our presence in the regions has grown. We manage our property portfolio so the service delivery arms of the organisation can provide the best service to people.

In 2008 we opened our first Community Link site in Linwood. Since then we have opened a further seven Community Links around New Zealand. These include sites in Ashburton, Rotorua, Kamo, Naenae, Huntly, and Flaxmere. We have plans to open more sites in 2009/2010.

We have a progressive programme for our social development regional offices across the country. Following our four successful upgrades last year, we recently completed the refurbishment of the Nelson regional office.

Our Child, Youth and Family offices are also being refreshed to ensure their receptions and meeting areas are family and children friendly. We completed the revamp of 29 Child, Youth and Family office receptions in 2008/2009 and have plans to refresh a further 14 sites in the forthcoming year. Future plans to refresh offices have been done in conjunction with the work we are doing to progressively develop more Community Link centres in regions throughout New Zealand.