Assessing organisational health and capability

The ministry undertook a comprehensive analysis of its organisational health and capability during 2006, with the strategic assessment completed as part of the Organisation Development Programme. The State Services Commission’s Education Sector Review, released in July 2005, provided an external perspective on how well the ministry was performing, with a particular focus on its leadership of the education Crown entities and responsibility for key change programmes within the senior secondary and tertiary education sectors. These reviews provided a platform for subsequent, more detailed and specific assessments, the results of which have informed the development of the Organisational Success strategic priority, and shaped how we plan to strengthen organisational health and capability to achieve intended outcomes and advance the Development Goals for the State Services.

Employer of choice

Our response to the first Gallup Engagement Survey in 2007 includes:

• enhanced business planning and prioritisation to ensure staff are clear about what the organisation is expected to deliver
• enhanced internal communications.

To ensure staff are supported with the appropriate tools to do their jobs, a number of significant reviews of information systems and business processes are underway, including:

• developing a new knowledge management system, with the introduction of an electronic document management system later in 2008, and the launch of an improved intranet and external website
• a strengthened property management programme through new information systems and business processes
• upgrading the ministry’s financial reporting tools
• a planned major upgrade of HR information and payroll systems.

A review of the competencies framework is required and the Lominger framework is to be piloted in one area as a precursor to this. Role clarity and refreshed and clear expectations of competence required for roles should make for measurable improvement in engagement of the ministry’s staff.

The Relationship Agreement will guide the continuing development of the relationship between the ministry, the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) and the Public Service Association (PSA). During 2008/09 a joint training programme for managers and union delegates will be developed and implemented.

The signing of the Partnership for Quality Agreement between the Government, State Services Commissioner and PSA has provided a State Services-wide context for a Partnership for Quality agreement being developed by the ministry and the PSA. This Agreement will provide for the continued development of Partnership for Quality within the ministry, and includes a work programme of initiatives jointly agreed as priorities.

Networked state services

A number of activities are underway which support this goal. The ICT Strategic Framework for Education 2008-12 will be released during 2008, updating the 2006-07 strategy, and contributing to the goals of the National Digital Strategy. Its purpose is to inform and guide the education sector on information and communications technologies (ICT) investment to support improved education outcomes. It is targeted at central education agencies as well as organisations within the wider education sector, and continues a focus on the elements of connectivity, content, capability and confidence. As part of the connectivity outcome, and to advance the goal of Networked State Services, the ministry leads the development of shared ICT services to support collaboration between education organisations, and supports the sector to take advantage of existing shared services in the wider government and public sector.

In respect of the education sector and agencies, key work is proceeding towards a shared sector register, common integration services tools linking applications with common data needs, and a single integrated process for authorisation and authentication. Agencies support and are committed to use whole-of-government ICT-related initiatives, such as the Government Logon Service and Identity Verification Service, where they meet business needs. In addition, further work is being done on rolling out the National Student Number across all schools, and linking this with core management systems. This wider work includes working with the agencies and schools on core data requirements and interoperability between systems. Following successful work with Schools Management Systems, this has the potential to be extended to Learning Management Systems which also use common data.

Value for money

The evaluation strategy and sector indicators programme continue to provide a framework for how we undertake monitoring and evaluation. A stocktake of our evaluative activity has highlighted the need to improve our prioritisation, our understanding of what good evaluation is, and how to use evaluative information better. The Strategy and Implementation Board will fulfil the strategic evaluation function – providing strategic coordination and oversight of evaluative activity, and quality assurance and improvement in our evaluative capability. An evaluation register will be completed in 2008, and mapped against the ministry priority outcomes. Work in this area aims to ensure evaluations are completed in critical areas, to embed evaluative activity and thinking across the organisation and to ensure the Leadership Team is aware of critical evaluations of key work.

We are initiating work to look at our value for money and prioritisation processes, with the overall goal of increasing the ministry’s understanding of the relationship between public expenditure on education and education outcomes. In the next year this work will include analysis to increase our understanding of how the components of Vote Education contribute to education outcomes, exploration of drivers of education expenditure in the medium-to long-term and their implications for investment decisions, and development and promulgation of tools to analyse the value for money of education programmes.

Coordinated state agencies

The ministry has strengthened its leadership role in the education sector. It is responsible for leading significant change programmes across the education sector and other government agencies, to achieve outcomes through the implementation of sector strategies such as the Early Childhood Education Strategic Plan, literacy and numeracy strategies, The New Zealand Curriculum, the development and implementation of Schools Plus, and population strategies such as the Pasifika Education Plan and Ka Hikitia – Managing for Success. The ministry is providing a broader education perspective to programmes led by others, such as the Unified Skills Strategy, and the innovation agencies’ alignment project.

The Secretary for Education is building her sector leadership role through the education agencies leadership forum. This group provides collective strategic leadership in areas contributing to improved performance and transformation of the system overall. In 2008, the group agreed a set of shared sector outcomes, which inform the operating intentions of each agency’s Statement of Intent and contribute to the Goal of Coordinated State Agencies.

Accessible state services

Engagement with a wide group of stakeholders is a priority for the ministry. This ensures the ministry’s work is informed by and responds to the needs of stakeholders. A strategy is being developed that recognises the importance of reaching beyond the education sector to employers and a wide range of community groups. Engagement with Māori has been extensive in the development of Ka Hikitia – Managing for Success and this will continue as the strategy is implemented. We have a strong engagement strategy with Pasifika Advisory groups and youth and community fono across the country. The external relationship management strategy will include a review of current channels of communication, including the Education Gazette, websites and corporate publications.

The ministry works closely with other agencies to ensure coordinated and effective specialist education services. Some examples of current joint work are the Newborn Hearing Screening Programme and the B4 School Check, being delivered jointly with the Ministry of Health. Working together, these national programmes will ensure that children with special education needs are referred appropriately. We are also aware that many issues cannot be dealt with by one agency alone. The Interagency Plan for Conduct Disorder/Severe Anti-Social Behaviour builds on the Intersectoral Strategy for Children and Young People with High and Complex Needs, the Severe Behaviour Initiative in Schools and the early intervention focus of the Youth Offending Strategy. It brings together Group Special Education and the wider ministry, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social Development, to ensure effective action to work with parents and other agencies, as this issue cannot be addressed by schools alone.

The ministry has a number of information and communications technologies (ICT) workstreams currently underway which contribute to the development Goal of Accessible State Services, including redevelopment of the ministry’s external website scheduled for completion this year. An Electronic Document Management System is being introduced to meet requirements under the Public Records Act 2005 and to improve document management and access to information. The ministry is involved with the redevelopment of a number of education-based websites used by principals, teachers, communities and learners, to meet usability standards and user needs. As part of this work, the underlying business process for determining how best to communicate and make information accessible to meet the individual requirements is also being assessed.

Trusted state services

Internally there are a number of initiatives underway to build leadership and management capability in our staff. The Human Resources Learning and Development Strategy is underway. A number of parts of the programme that will underpin the strategy have been completed. These include ongoing manager induction sessions and other training modules for managers.

Following a stocktake of 2007 business plans, new processes were put in place to support prioritisation and business planning for 2008, including the development of templates and guidance, and training for all managers with a role in the preparation of group business plans. Annual stocktakes of business plans will indicate the extent to which these processes have contributed to more coherent and outcomes-focused business planning.

The way that we work internally with each other and externally with the sector influences the way our advice and services are perceived, and our ability to focus on results. A particular area of focus currently is our policy capability and processes. We have established a Cabinet Paper Quality Assurance Panel to ensure that Cabinet papers meet quality standards. We are continuing to provide plain English writing courses to our staff. These are short-term responses that complement longer-term work to improve the quality of our advice through a policy capability project and the learning and development framework. External benchmarking will provide a measure of our success.

We are developing new approaches to the way we do our work, as programme management processes used in ICT projects are now being extended to major policy projects. Schools Plus will be developed by staff in a dedicated programme office with secondees from other agencies, and an internal governance group to provide direction to and oversight of the programme. This cross-functional approach will be used as a model for how we direct our effort and resources.

Measures of organisational health and capability

We will maintain oversight of our organisational health and capability through the following measures:

• financial ratios
• staff retention rates, length of service and unexplained absences
• results of the engagement survey
• ACC incident and accident rates.

Pay and employment equity

The review of pay and employment equity for ministry staff has been completed and recommendations arising from it have been agreed. During 2008 we are completing a pay investigation for the largest occupational work group, covering 800-1,000 support workers in special education. Over the 2008/09 year we will plan how to address the other recommendations arising from the review.

We will be reviewing our policies and processes in light of the new Equality and Diversity: New Zealand Public Service Equal Employment Opportunities Policy to ensure we can accommodate the shifts in emphasis. Our new People Strategy will be developed and implemented.

We are reviewing our recruitment process, and expect to improve the technology that supports that process. This will also give us better demographic information over time about our workforce and applicants for our vacancies, and enable better monitoring of any disparities in pay rates across demographic groups and the composition of our workforce.

In accordance with Government’s Pay and Employment Equity Plan of Action, we are currently progressing reviews of pay and employment equity in the compulsory education and tertiary sectors, and have begun a review of the kindergarten sector. Tri-partite and bi-partite groups have been formed for each review.

Departmental capital intentions

The ministry manages almost $10 billion of assets across New Zealand, including approximately $9.7 billion of school property assets. School Sector Property expenditure must meet performance standards in respect of the quantity of activities achieved.

School property assets management includes demographic analysis of population change to determine future requirements for the location and size of schools. The investment in school property allows 21st-century learning environments to be created in new and upgraded schools.

Under self-management, existing schools can prioritise capital funded through five-year agreements to create 21st-century learning environments.

In 2008/09 the following significant school property initiatives are planned:

• $121 million capital expenditure to build capacity in the school portfolio to support roll growth in high demand areas (through new school construction and site purchases)
• $36 million expenditure for kura kaupapa Māori and wharekura
• $30 million for the provision of 130 classrooms and five gyms for roll growth
• $15 million for the School Property Guide programme
• $135 million to support the ongoing five-year property programme.

Information and communications technologies related capital expenditure includes projects that impact on the wider education sector and are focused on improving and sharing information, linking agencies and improving access. These support Development Goals for the State Services of Networked State Services and Accessible State Services, and include:

• extending National Student Number to all schools
• implementation of core architecture for sector logon (Education Sector Authentication and Authorisation) to central systems and for sharing information (Education Sector Integration Services)
• Shared Sector Register.

Expenditure is incurred only after approval of the capital programme for the year, and for larger projects (including all ICT and School Property projects) upon approval of a detailed business case.

Project management committees monitor all significant capital programmes.

Information and communications technologies and property capital programmes are overseen by governance boards.

Strong project management disciplines are applied to all significant projects, whereby capital programmes are monitored and managed across the development and implementation cycle, including monitoring progress against milestones and against budgets at each stage.

For significant projects, reviews at key stages require the update of a project business case to confirm the ongoing viability of the project, and that net realisable benefits outlined in the original business case remain achievable. The release of funding for the next stage of a project is linked to the approval of the updated business case.

The Ministry of Education is categorised as a capital-intensive agency for Capital Asset Management purposes. During the 2008/09 year the ministry will begin ensuring advanced asset management practices are in place.

The following table outlines the ministry’s intended capital expenditure programme.

3. Forecast for current year at time of printing