Assessing Organisational Health and Capability

What are we seeking to achieve?

The Ministry must have the right skills and resources in place to deliver what is required by Government, including strong change management and implementation skills. That means retaining top performing staff and attracting high calibre applicants, with the Ministry recognised as a workplace in which achievement, challenge and results are expected and delivered.

The Ministry needs to maximise the level of resources deployed to front-line services by ensuring that all our support functions are efficient and able to deliver the right outcome in the shortest possible timeframe with the least number of transactions.

The Ministry provides IT solutions to support the work on assessment in schools and to enable the Ministry to deliver funding.

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How will we demonstrate success in achieving this?

We will know we have achieved this when we see changes such as:

• improved employee engagement
• evidence of increased leadership capability of managers
• evidence of more effective use and implementation of key strategies that support improvements in educational achievement and system performance
• staffing numbers and costs remaining within levels agreed by Government
• levels of staff turnover
• efficacy of IT systems.

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What will we do to achieve this?

Maintain high quality staff

The Ministry will implement a leadership development process and programme to ensure that all Ministry managers have the core management skills and knowledge to sustain and build employee engagement in the workforce. This will include ensuring that managers understand how to use the tools and evidence available to achieve the lift in educational achievement and system performance required. For specialists this includes aligning practice models to evidence. The Ministry is improving the information collected on employee engagement, including information on staff turnover, health and safety and exit data.

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Maximise value from resource use

The Ministry will maximise and monitor departmental resources by undertaking the actions outlined in the Operating Intentions section, implementing decisions made through Budget 2009 and the line-by-line review, and managing staffing numbers using improved Human Resources coordination and reporting.

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Provide infrastructure and support

The Ministry will continue IT support for the implementation of assessment tools for teachers, the development of data stores for special education to enable improvements in service support and IT support for the early childhood education funding and regulatory system. The Ministry is continuing to upgrade internal infrastructure to ensure we have the IT systems and business continuance capability required to deliver core services in the event of a disaster or adverse event.

Ministry performance in these three areas will be measured by:

• levels of employee engagement
• assessment of the leadership capability of managers
• feedback on the capability of the workforce to deliver on key strategies
• monitoring staffing numbers and costs
• monitoring of turnover, health and safety and exit information
• monitoring the delivery and implementation of IT projects.

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Departmental Capital Intentions

The Ministry manages almost $10.7 billion of Crown assets across New Zealand, including approximately $10.6 billion of school property assets. The Ministry is categorised as a capital-intensive agency for Capital Asset Management purposes.

School Sector Property expenditure must meet performance standards in respect of the quantity of activities achieved. School property asset management includes both management of the existing property assets to ensure they support 21st-century learning environments, and planning for future schooling requirements in areas of population growth. The Ministry works with boards of trustees to prioritise capital funded through five-year agreements for the modernisation of their schools.

In 2009/10 the following significant school property capital expenditure is planned:

• $199 million to support the ongoing five-year property programme
• $149 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)
• $55 million for demand driven programmes, including special needs modifications and rectification of ‘leaky buildings’
• $35 million for the provision of classrooms for roll growth
• $30 million expenditure for kura kaupapa Māori and wharekura
• $29 million for replacement buildings
• $24 million for the School Property Guide programme for non-teaching spaces
• $13 million for special schools and satellites.

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Information and communications technologies (ICT) related capital expenditure includes projects that maintain the core infrastructure, support the wider education sector, and are focused on improving and sharing information, linking agencies and meeting Government priorities. The key projects currently proposed or under way include:

• maintaining the core funding application for schools
• refreshing core infrastructure to support the operation of the Ministry and education sector
• enhancing disaster recover capability.

Expenditure is incurred only after approval of the capital programme for the year and for larger ICT projects upon approval of a detailed business case. An education report is provided to Cabinet for new school projects with a value greater than $15 million and to the Ministers of Education and Finance for new school projects with a value greater than $7 million. In addition:

• Project Management Boards monitor all significant capital programmes
• ICT 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.

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