Performance and Accountability: Budget Reform in New Zealand

Since 1984, New Zealand has made major changes in public sector management. This article describes the perceived problems with the previous New Zealand system and discusses the reforms designed to address these problems. The changes attempt to increase efficiency by: (1) separating commercial functions from other government operations; (2) strengthening lines of ministerial and executive accountability; and (3) designing budget and financial management systems to improve measurement of public sector performance. This last reform includes shifting from an input to an output-based system, changing from cash to accrual accounting, and creating different forms of appropriations for different types of government activities. While it is too early to assess whether the reforms are successful, we note potential problems.     

Voluntary Organisations and Community Politics: Norwegian and British Comparisons

The study reported in this article compares local political activity of voluntary organizations in a Norwegian and an English city — Tromsø and Birmingham. The two cities display rather striking structural similarities with respect to the relative number of organizations as well as to organizational membership. The relative distribution of major types of organizations is also rather similar, although there is a greater degree of organizational specialization in the English city.
With respect to political activity of the organizations the two cities are, however, quite different. While two thirds of the organizations in Tromsø have been active in local political matters, this holds true for less than 30 per cent of the organizations in Birmingham.
This difference is attributed to the finding that in the Norwegian case local government assists organizations with goods and services, while in the English case organizations have to depend on their own internal resources. An additional factor is that Norwegian organizations, when compared to their English counterparts, have greater access to political decision-making bodies.     

The Impact of Funding Modalities on the Performance of Indigenous Organisations

Governments’ choice of funding modality can produce powerful incentives for organisations to perform in preferred ways, but it can also divert limited resources, narrow accountability, and undermine capability. Through literature review and interviews, the research explored the international literature on public finance management in developing country contexts, and compared this to case studies of Indigenous organisations. The situation in Australia was found to differ in three ways: (1) performance indicators are imposed, rather than negotiated; (2) few existing public funding modalities reward performance or provide incentives; and (3) funding arrangements do not generally require receiving organisations to be accountable to their constituents. Stability and durability of funding modalities, and clarity in functions and jurisdictional boundaries, were also found to positively influence performance. Further research is required to design new performance frameworks that build around the organisation, rather than the grant, with indicators of governance capability and downward accountability to constituents.     

Searching for Efficiency in the Public Sector: Interim Evaluation of Performance Budgeting in New Zealand

In this article I examine the efforts to promote performance measurement in the public sector with particular reference to New Zealand. In section two I examine the State Sector Act of 1988 and the Public Finance Act of 1989, which together brought about changes in the New Zealand public sector. In section three I examine the problems of implementing the reform. In section four I discuss the experience of developing statements of performance measurement required under the Financial Administration Act of 1989 and in section five I develop an alternative scheme on the basis that a uniform approach is less likely to be applicable to a range of public sector agencies. The final section contains a brief conclusion.     

E-Government in New Zealand

Abstract

Although it has just 4 million people and an economy which is almost entirely based on agriculture, New Zealand has been nominated by the UN as the world's third most advanced in e-government.

That might surprise foreigners but not Kiwis, who have always had a rapid uptake of new technology. Leading the country into an electronic world is the E-Government Unit, which is charged with coordinating and integrating e-services across all government agencies. Some of the solutions are original but New Zealand has not hesitated to scour the world for best-of-practices solutions and modify them to its own environment.     

New Millennium,New Public Management and the New Zealand Model

Recently the much‐discussed ‘New Zealand model’ of new public management (NPM) has become significantly revised. It now lacks the theoretical coherence and the market‐led focus that it relied on between 1987 and 1996. Labour‐led governments since 1999 have undertaken gradual and pragmatic – yet significant – changes in public management structures and principles, refining and sometimes reversing the model implemented in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This article does a ‘stock‐take’ of public management developments in New Zealand from 1999 to 2008, and argues that New Zealand can no longer be viewed as a leading exponent of market‐led NPM. Some NPM principles have been refined, but others have been quietly abandoned. The new National‐led government appears unwilling to undertake radical reforms, and, while it may seek a greater role for the private sector, looks set to continue with the ‘gradual and pragmatic’ approach adopted since 1999.     

Public Administration in Troubled Waters: Organisations, Management and 'A New Oceania'

The crux of this article is that public administration is indeed in troubled waters in terms of the threatened legitimacy of the modern state: that many of the organisational and managerial reforms of recent years have had the effect of debasing parliamentary politics by ushering in a much more definite form of executive imperialism than has ever been witnessed in previous eras. More specifically, the reforms have changed, or are changing, the configurations of power and authority in and beyond government in ways that appear to enhance neither the processes of democratic rule nor the individual and collective well-being of many sections of society. It is thus surely time to stand back, to take stock of the situation, and to question whether the reforms are in fact achieving goals and objectives to which governments and communities ought really to be committed.     

Accountability or Countability? Performance Measurement in the New Zealand Public Service, 1992–2002

This article examines how output classes and performance indicators have changed between 1992 and 2002 in five selected departments of the New Zealand Public Service. Process, output and largely artificial service quality performance measures have crowded out outcome, efficiency and effectiveness indicators, across the board. Both output classes and performance indicators have been highly labile, though the reasons for this remain speculative in the meantime. The New Zealand state sector is currently implementing a ‘managing for outcomes’ strategy, intended to overcome too strong a preoccupation with the production of outputs. However, because output classes remain the key feature of the Public Finance Act 1989 the means of ensuring and demonstrating policy effectiveness must be more broadly based than a reliance on the countability of organisational output classes and performance measures.     

Equity concern and the political economy of protection in New Zealand

A number of empirical models have found protection to be greatest for industries employing poorly skilled, low paid workers. This has caused some economists, notably Robert Baldwin, to suggest that equity concern by politicians in an alternative to the interest group hypothesis. This paper reports the result of a test on New Zealand data that shows that this equity concern is absent for industries with few employees or firms. Equity concern variables were only important for industries with many employees and firms. This suggests that equity concern is selective and may be reconcilable with self-interest motivations.I am grateful to John Tressler, Richard Harris and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments.     

Trajectories of Arts and Culture Policy in New Zealand

This article examines how arts and culture policy has been discussed since the 1960s in New Zealand, showing how it has increasingly been coupled with the construction of national identity. It also suggests that the rhetoric of the current Labour government marks a significant change. Against the traditional understanding of arts and culture as public and cultural goods, whose vital ‐ if intangible ‐ benefits justify the inevitable economic cost, since 1999 they have been fundamentally re‐imagined as contributing to a cohesive society ‐ through the fostering of “national identity” ‐ and also to a dynamic economy ‐ through the creation of jobs. This change is seen as an element of “third‐way” politics, and is argued to limit dangerously the sort of art that can be funded and valued.     

Governing strategically: the New Zealand experience

This article describes the evolution of New Zealand's approach to the strategic direction of its public service during a decade of reform. Problems of atomization and short-termism which emerged from the first phase of reform were addressed through the adaptation of the Cabinet and central agency processes for policy, budget and management. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Whither the New Zealand Experiment: Thermidorean Reaction or Rediscovering the Importance of Capacity - Some views from New Zealand

To trace the main trajectory of New Zealand's public management reforms, let us take some recent assessments from two Prime Ministers ‐ one who initiated the reforms, the other who inherited them.

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