Rating the Departments
June 8th, 2010 at 10:00 am by David FarrarThe education and health ministries are among the worst-performing government departments, according to a report card ranking state agencies and bosses.
The snapshot report, to be issued on Friday, finds excessive red tape, bureaucratic systems and ineffective consultation are hampering government departments.
While health and education are lagging, the Social Development Ministry is leading the way, alongside Customs and the Reserve Bank.
The Trans Tasman Media report, which is in the final draft stages, used 16 independent commentators to assess 37 departments.
The independent board rated departments in five categories: chief executive performance, ease of doing business, budget performance and value for money, service delivery, and overall performance.
I was one of the 16 commentators (as was the Dominion Post Editor), and also helped Trans Tasman with the survey design. I found the data quite fascinating.
The board of advisors included Peter Conway from the CTU, Mai Chen, Dave Henderson from the Assn of NGOs, Tina Reid from the Federation of Voluntary Welfare Orgs, Phil O’Reilly from Business NZ etc.
Each state core agency was rated from 1 to 7, so four is the mid point. and the average agency overall rating was 4.2.
The top 10 agencies for overall performance were:
- Customs 5.38
- Reserve Bank 5.08
- MSD 5.08
- LINZ 5.00
- Stats 5.00
- MFAT 4.91
- Treasury 4.77
- IRD 4.73
- DPMC 4.67
- MED 4.64
Customs received high ratings across the board. They are obviously a quiet effective performer.
The three biggest departments in terms of vote administered are Education, Health and MSD. What I found interesting is that one of them was rated right near the top, and the other two almost at the bottom.
When you consider the past scandals and crises at MSD (which includes CYF), they really have turned their performance around. They have shown that size is not a barrier to quality.
It of some concern that the ratings for Education and Health ministries are so low.
The other area of real concern is SSC, with a low 3,55 rating. SSC is one of the three co-ordinating or central agencies alongside DPMC and Treasury. They should be one of the top ten agencies, not one of the bottom ten.How can you be in charge of assessing the performance of other agencies, when your own performance is seen externally (and internally from what I hear) as lack lustre.
From time to time people suggest that we don’t really need three central co-ordinating agencies, and SSC could be abolished with some of its functions transferred to DPMC. Unless they make themselves more relevant, and of greater value, then that may be an idea whose time has come.
Later in the week Trans-Tasman will announce the pick of the panel for Agency of the Year and CEO of the Year. This is not based simply on the ratings, but is based on more qualitative judgements.
The full report is around 100 pages long, and includes detailed critiques of each agency. It is available for sale from Trans Tasman.
Another interesting aspect of the results was, as reported here, that CEOs tnded to get higher ratings than their agencies. This suggests that having a good CEO is a necessary pre-requisite to good performance, but by itself is not a guarantee of sucess.
Some agencies seem to be so challenged, they they defy even the best CEO to turn around. On the other hand MSD is a good example of what you can do.
June 8th, 2010 at 10:06 am
The education and health ministries are among the worst-performing government departments
..you can add Immigration NZ to the list as well…. a complete mess
Vote:June 8th, 2010 at 10:44 am
“..you can add Immigration NZ to the list as well…. a complete mess”
Considering the hoops Richard OBrien is having to jump thru to be allowed to live here again – Immigration is in a mess.
Vote:However if you are a Chinese student with some money – no problem, welcome, come in and murder someone.
June 8th, 2010 at 10:45 am
“The education and health ministries are among the worst-performing government departments,”
Where were they on the list of 37? What were their ratings?
Vote:June 8th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Interestingly there has been issues with granting of benefits within MSD in recent times. The main problem being that their internal policies, manuals, etc were out of whack with the governing legislation. They have also ‘fettered’ their own discretion with internal policies etc resulting in decisions being successfully challenged in court. Presumably MSD has made real efforts to sort these problems out. Incidentally all these policies, manuals, etc are publically available on their web site although a bit hard to find.
Vote:June 8th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
How do you compare the ‘performance’ of Govt depts? By definition each one has quite different types of responsibilities, and must therefore operate in different sorts of ways.
e.g. Health – dealing with policy that is related to life/death situations in some cases, which is quite different than Education which was told to implement a policy that many experts don’t believe will be worthwhile. Perhaps the ratings have something to do with the Ministers in charge – it would certainly explain the performance of Education.
Vote:June 8th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
The only dealings I have with MSD is through Studylink and they are the most hopeless bureaucratic mess! Their website to apply for loans still asks if you bank with Eastern and Central Trustbank! If you fail to complete the “optional” ‘check if my parents earn too much page’ the process fails to complete and starts from the beginning. When my son’s living expenses weren’t approved he wasn’t told – he only found out when the landlord asked for the rent!. It’s now June and they still haven’t decided if he qualifies or not. MSD may give out money to beneficiaries left right and centre but Studylink is there to oppose education!
Vote:June 8th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
MikeG – depends on your viewpoint. For example Labour would have expected the Health Ministry to find the real ‘guts’ behind any Parliamentary question concerning health within a couple of hours and that requires requires hefty pen-pushing resources.
To give an indication of ‘performance’ issues. There is an expensive new drug on the market that avoids the need for semi-urgent surgery for condition ‘X’. Pharmac says they cannot afford it within their budget. Hospitals have to undertake this surgery which say costs three times as much as the drug with the extra consequence that waiting lists for surgery in general are longer. If someone did a cost benefit, it would be shown to be cheaper to buy the drug. However it probably proves too difficult to give Pharmac extra funding for the drug and to shave a bit off hospitals budget to compensate. I suspect the health sector is rife with such problems.
There is apparently another problem. High tech health equipment is purchased from ‘big name’ companies at a high price (which probably is needed to meet USA liability claims) whereas satisfactory equipment is apparently available from third world sources at a fraction of the cost. Is there any group doinf an objective analysis of this sort of thing.
Vote:June 8th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
I think Health and Education should be near the top as they are some of the few departments that can be truly decentralised…
Vote:June 8th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Just shows that they need to be and downsized.
Vote:June 8th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
I struggle to comprehend MSD being rated so highly, having worked there for 13 months during which time I had the ‘pleasure’ many times of encounters with CEO Peter Hughes. A male Helen Clark if ever there was one. MSD is hugely over-resourced, filled with inexperienced idealists who spend more time sipping Lattes at MOF than doing any real work. One cannot even performance manage incompetent dimwits out of that place due to the ‘almighty’ socialist command of angry little man Hughes.
Vote:June 8th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
I worked at Customs for a couple of years… To put it mildly, their ranking suprised me…
Vote: