Better, easier, cheaper ways to access information

13 July 2011

Yesterday the Office of the Government CIO  published a revised policy for web based services across government.  “Rethink Online” outlines a structure that will provide much greater efficiency and effectiveness than is being achieved with uncoordinated, agency-specific initiatives  at present.  This will involve substantial change, initially for Public Service departments for which the policy will be mandatory, but increasingly across the State services.

UK, Canadian and Australian experiences have influenced the three “good government” objectives specified;

“Better customer experience

  • Reduced fragmentation of information and services across agencies and channels
  • Increased focus on the usability and usefulness of online information and services

Improved value for money

  • Reduced duplication in infrastructure, content and people capability
  • Better coordinated investments across government
  • More effective use of online channels to reduce the cost of service delivery

Increased strategic agility

  • More flexibility to manage changes in customer demand, technology and government
  • Increased ability to leverage capability outside of government
  • Achieving these outcomes will require government to take a new approach to its investment in and use of online channels, moving from single agency initiatives and investment toward cross-agency approaches.”

The report illustrates how currently, there are more than 600 agency websites with annual maintenance costs exceeding $40m.  This cannot deliver on the responsibility of chief executives for the efficient, effective and economical management of their agency activities.

The report confirms the NZGOAL policy by which agencies are to release information for open access and reuse. It refers to the new ways of adding value to public data that flowed from the mashup competition last year, although there is no reference to this year’s ‘Mix and Mash’ now underway.  The report outlines the need to cluster, share skill, concentrate technology, partner with third parties and measure business value. Agency intranets will be absorbed into websites, with the information they contain being recalibrated for public use.

“Rethink Online” is a reminder to agencies of the duty  to make information progressively more available, as specified in section 4 of the Official Information Act.

http://www.e.govt.nz/programme/rethink-online/rethink-online-strategy#summary

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July 13, 2011

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Managers modelling standards

12 July 2011

Standards in any organisation are shaped extensively by the behaviour of senior managers; tone at the top is trite but true. The good intentions of junior staff will make little headway if there is indifference or hypocrisy among the executive team. Practices at News of the World, condoned by management, became the paper’s norm.   The irony is a reported strike back by staff in the last edition. Despite the editor having a careful review to avoid any criticism of her by journalists, clues of disaffection were incorporated in the crossword.

Staff readily identify where  their leaders fail to meet the expectations set for their subordinates.  It can be compounded when there are explicitly different standards.  A contemporary example is the code of conduct for employees at the IMF.  The Managing Director and his directors were exempt.

The requirement for managers to model ethical behaviour is one of the “6 trust elements” underpinning  integrity in the State Services. Workers inevitably replicate the way their superiors behave. Leaders who walk the talk will find their behaviour is copied.  And where only lip service is given to standards, misconduct will be commonplace.  Staff take pride in leaders who exemplify high ethical conduct, but they quickly recognise where this does not happen.  In the 2010 State Services Integrity Survey, employees’ responces were that senior staff were held to lower standards than those required of others.  This poor perception of senior staff was one of the few deteriorating aspects  compared with the previous survey in 2007.

Yesterday the State Services Commissioner republished his guidance to chief executives about their declaration and disclosure of expenses, gifts and hospitality for the first half of 2011. This is a reminder of the requirement to lead by example.  All agencies should have internal processes for such declarations by all staff.  Ensuring that chief executives very publicly disclose all apparent benefits received from sources apart from their employer, means State servants everywhere know what is expected and have no reason for not similarly disclosing any benefits which could be perceived as a potential conflict.

Where that does not happen, the 6 trust elements expect decisive action to be taken.

The inquiry into allegations of bullying at the Department of Building and Housing may well reflect the State Services Commissioner giving effect to this “decisive action” element. In the last week, several instances have been reported of decisive action in overseas jurisdictions.  China’s Minister of Railways has now been stood down following the investigation into his corrupt handling of Shanghai high speed railway finances.  Croatia’s most senior military officer has been arrested on corruption charges.

http://profit.ndtv.com/news/show/at-imf-a-strict-ethics-code-doesnt-apply-to-top-officials-156812

www.ssc.govt.nz/node/5390

www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/5252978/Inquiry-into-alleged-abuse-by-boss

http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/02/china%E2%80%99s-railway-minister-loses-post-in-corruption-inquiry/

http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2011/07/08/croatia-arrests-general-on-corruption-charges/

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July 12, 2011

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We must be trustworthy

11 July 2011

Good government needs widespread public trust in state agencies. Unless agencies and people working for them act in trustworthy ways, voluntary compliance with law diminishes and communities crumble. Corruption grows where officials fail to do a proper job. Public confidence in politicians is also desirable but the pursuit of power inherent in politics engenders cynicism. Politicians always rate poorly in trustworthiness surveys. Their rating is usually only marginally better than the media – which ironically is attributed with a quasi constitutional function of promoting openness in government, of keeping government honest.

The News of the World scandal must influence perceptions of the trustworthiness of both the media and Ministers. But this corrosion of good government will be worsened by the apparent involvement of police officers. Not only were there illegal disclosures and corrupt payments made for that information, but there can be little confidence in the professionalism of internal investigations. Who watches the watchers? Scotland Yard now deeply regrets the adequacy of the investigation.  The matter has been “a very damaging episode for us and we have got to work hard to rebuild the trust in the Met”. Reports are that as many as 12 officers could be convicted of accepting payments from the News of the World and jailed.

Transparency International earlier this year published “Corruption in the UK” suggesting that there is a greater level of corruption in Britain than is widely accepted, with corruption risks across several sectors. It identified the weakening of several anti-corruption bodies, although noting that bribery within the police force was not endemic.

All State sector employees in New Zealand are required to act in a trustworthy way. Being “fair, impartial responsible and trustworthy” are the principles of public service prescribed in the Cabinet Manual. The UMR Mood of the Nation survey provides an annual snapshot of levels of public confidence in a range of agencies. Respondents evaluating whether agencies do very good or good job place the Fire Service in the top spot year on year with 94% in the most recent survey. NZ Police were next with 77%.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8628052/John-Yates-I-failed-victims-of-News-of-the-World-phone-hacking.html

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/07/07/phone-hacking-scandal-uk-corruption-cannot-be-ignored/

www.umr.co.nz/Reports/UMR%20Mood%20of%20the%20Nation_2010.pdf

 

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July 11, 2011

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Bullying at work

8 July 2011

The State Services Integrity Survey carried out in 2007 and again in 2010 measured levels of trustworthiness in agencies, based on the experience of State servants. In 2007, the most frequently observed misconduct was abusive and intimidating behaviour towards employees. Remedial recommendations for agency leaders included taking decisive action where this bullying behaviour arose. In 2010 the survey indicated that, if anything, bullying had worsened, with the responses suggesting that 38% experienced this staff on staff intimidation. There was no evidence of any concerted attention given to reversing the trend.

Bullying is common in many jurisdictions but seems more rife in New Zealand than elsewhere, with problems being greater in education and health sectors. There is regular media attention to problems in schools. Earlier this year Michelle Obama, supported by the US President, fronted a campaign that highlighted the blighting effect of bullying on school children. School bullies become workplace bullies. Work by the Health Research Council and the Department of Labour found that bullying is more prevalent in New Zealand due to the “autocratic and old style of management” still existing in many of the country’s organisations.

A HuffPost blog entry last week “…Abusive Bosses and Unhealthy Management” indicates that the New Zealand experience is far from unique. The blog reports that …a Gallup Poll of 1 million workers found that bad bosses are the number 1 reason for quitting a job. And a 2011 Harris poll found that 36 percent of workers report ongoing work stress, “most of which is related to negative or outright unhealthy management practices”.

Keynote addresses as both the New Zealand Employment Law conference in June, and the UK Employment Law conference yesterday featured bullying and intimidation in the workplace.

The State Sector Act specifies that departmental chief executives are responsible for “fair and proper” and “good and safe” workplaces. The State Services code of conduct imposes an obligation to treat everyone fairly and with respect. The guidance explains that the standard includes “…not harassing, bullying or otherwise intimidating members of the public or colleagues.”

Of course, publishing a code is never enough. Integrity is a state of mind, not a set of rules. And leadership means leading by example.

www.ssc.govt.nz/sites/all/files/integrityandconduct-survey2010-findings-summary.pdf

www.tewahanui.info/wordpress2/?p=4428

www.huffingtonpost.com/douglas-labier/the-lowdown-on-abusive-bosses_b_887157.html

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July 8, 2011

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Bringing your agency into disrepute

7 July 2011

The chief executive of the NZ Employers’ and Manufacturers’ Association has lost his job. He made public comments which brought castigating media attention to his organisation. His comments were readily edited into very unattractive sound bites. His organisation risked portrayal as discriminatory and misogynistic.

A responsibility of all employees is to do nothing that will bring disrepute to their employer.  In the State Services this duty is explained as part of the obligation to be trustworthy;  “We must avoid activities, work or non work, that may harm the  reputation of our organisation or the State Services.”  The State Services Commissioner’s guidance explains that this means that officials must avoid being connected publicly with behaviour that creates a sense of public disquiet, and that, implicitly, diminishes trust in the State Services.

The guidance alerts its readers to “the likely public perception of the appropriateness of what we do, and the “angle” that commentators may adopt if there is media reporting of our activities”.  Discriminatory and misogynistic comments shared with the media would conflict with the trustworthiness standard, regardless of any rights to free speech.

A finding from research undertaken during the development of the State Services code was that members of the public expect higher standards of government agency staff than they do of the private sector. The furore over the comments by the former EMU chief executive suggests that may not always be the case.

As interesting historical coincidences, on this day

  • In 1942, at Auschwitz, experiments began on women under Himmler’s directions,
  • in 1948 the first women were accepted into regular service with the US Navy,
  • in 1958 the first women cadets were admitted to the US military academy at Westpoint
  • in 1981 Sandra Day O’Connor was nominated as the first female judge of the US Supreme Court.

www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/5243023/Employers-group-sacks-Alasdair-Thompson

cabinetmanual.cabinetoffice.govt.nz/3.50

www.ssc.govt.nz/sites/all/files/Understanding-the-Code-of-Conduct-April2010.pdf

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July 7, 2011

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Where is Open Government going?

6 July 2011

Is the door closing on open government?

New Zealand’s Official Information Act replicates characteristics of the US Freedom of Information Act.  The FOIA came into force 45 years ago (Independence Day 1966). The influence of this US development undermined notions that information held by government agencies was a secret resource for use by the Public Service to protect the State.  The FOIA began a swing in the attitude to information.  Government should prove why public information shouldn’t be disclosed, instead of forcing people to justify why it should be.

The Official Information Act however, like the FOIA, has not delivered fully on its promise.  The provisions of section 4, that agencies must increase progressively the availability of information, has been pursued in a very patchy way over the 29 years since enactment.   A quick survey of agency websites shows how few post even half a dozen new documents each week. Such cannot be the productivity of agencies committed to transparency, efficiency and effectiveness. The internet age was meant to transform the availability of information.  But the enthusiasm of a few is buried by “inertia, bureaucratic reluctance, and lack of funding”.

Britain resisted the move away from official secrets much longer than jurisdictions like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but has made speedier progress in making information accessible.  The UK website WhatDoTheyKnow.com makes many government information requests publicly available. The site obtains requested information from the appropriate agency and publishes on line. An Australian development last month is a disclosure log maintained on all agency websites, publishing, within 10 days of release, the details of material made available in response to information requests.

The second Mix and Mash competition is now underway in New Zealand.  It encourages innovative ways of reusing official information already available on agency websites. An underpinning motivation is that novel uses will encourage greater responsiveness by agencies; that inspirational repackaging of datasets will increase the willingness of agencies to make data available.  There is unlikely to be a backlash to this development, which last year produced admirable ways making information useful to the public, which agencies themselves did not have the capacity to develop.

But that is not the case in Slovakia. Despite an enthusiasm for open government, there seems to be a change in attitude by the Slovakian government.  Fair Play Alliance, which has a website mashing public data has been charged with public order offences and directed to remove information from its website, even though the source material was drawn from published sources.

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/is-the-door-closing-on-open-government/2011/06/30/AGiY3YsH_story.html

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/07/01/happy-birthday-foia-freedom-of-informations-future/

www.mixandmash.org.nz/

www.globalintegrity.org/blog/data-mashups-illegal-slovakia

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July 6, 2011

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Bad apples

5 July 2011

Britain slipped to 20th in the last Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International. That places it not only below Scandinavian countries, and places like New Zealand, Singapore, Canada and Australia, but more corrupt also than Hong Kong, Ireland,  Barbados, Japan and Qatar.   From a British perspective, several other integrity comparisons place it in a similarly poor light.

This week, new anti-bribery crimes come into force in the UK.  enforcement will be a responsibility of the Serious Fraud Office.  The need for such discouragement seems  justified by the scandal emerging about the stadium being completed for the London Olympic games.

A condition on the games being awarded to London was that the main stadium must continue being used for athletic purposes on conclusion of the Olympics.  Only football clubs had the interest and financial ability to do so; West Ham and Tottenham made bids.  West Ham was successful. Media reports now suggest improprieties in the process.

The Corporate Affairs director of the agency making the decision to award the stadium to West Ham, not only had a consultancy with West Ham for which she received a $20,000 fee, but had a personal relationship with a West Ham executive.  Both the agency director and the West Ham executive have been stood down.  A pattern of litigation relating to the post-Olympics use of the stadium will continue.  What will linger is a sense that British organisation of the Olympics may have characteristics in common with the Indian management of the Commonwealth Games.

www.building.co.uk/news/breaking-news/west-ham-hits-back-at-olympic-payment-accusations/5020960.article?

 

www.wharf.co.uk/2011/07/west-ham-take-legal-action-ove.html

http://transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results

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July 5, 2011

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NSW lobbying changes now in force

4 July 2011

The New South Wales Premier when in opposition, advocated the tightening up of lobbying practices . Change became a reality on 1 July when the State government published a Revised Code of Conduct for Lobbyists. These measures strengthen provisions of the 2009 code. Two criminal offences are created.

  •  Former Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries commit an offence if they lobby an official about any matter on which they had a portfolio responsibility in the 18 months before they ceased to hold office. (In NSW, a parliamentary secretary may be either an MP or MLC, and on behalf of Ministers, meets with stakeholders and members of the public, attend public events and helping to formulate Government policy.)
  • Anyone paying or receiving a success fee, relating to lobbying, commits an offence. Any lobbyist convicted of this offence will be deregistered from the register of lobbyists.

The new rules also prohibit the appointment of a lobbyist, or anyone working with a lobbyist, to any government board or committee, including SOEs, if the agency functions relate to anything that the lobbyist has engaged in during the 12 month period preceding the proposed appointment.

A few comments by political bloggers in mid June when a Greens MP sought to introduce a Lobbying Disclosure Bill is the extent of public interest in New Zealand. There is very little concern that lobbying and related conflicts of interests may have an undermining effect on good government. The OECD Principles for Transparency and Integrity in Lobbying, launched in February 2011, have not led to any official response in New Zealand.

www.dpc.nsw.gov.au/prem/lobbyist_register/code_of_conduct

www.dpc.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/124177/Notice_to_Lobbyists.pdf

www.oecd.org/document/48/0,3746,en_2649_34859_44644592_1_1_1_1,00.html

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July 4, 2011

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Can ministerial advisers be apolitical?

1 July 2011

The New Zealand Public Service when established in 1912 was modelled on the British Civil Service – a merit based, apolitical career service. These characteristics  still give strength to both Services.

The State Sector Act specifies how Public Service appointments must be made. Vacancies must be advertised in a way that will enable suitably qualified people to apply. And the person selected must be best suited for appointment. The Cabinet Manual requires that all employees must act with a spirit of service to the community and meet high standards of integrity and conduct in everything they do. In particular, they must be fair, impartial, responsible, and trustworthy. Impartial means politically neutral.

Intriguingly it was only in 2010 that the principles of merit and impartiality in the British Civil Service were established by statute.  A new Civil Service Commission was established to monitor the merit appointment process and to manage complaints under a statutory code of conduct.  A Commissioner for Public Appointments is tasked with ensuring the process remains apolitical.

The two roles now have a joint Commissioner. This watchdog is to audit appointments made since the British election after allegations that the coalition has exploited loopholes that allow ministers to recruit people on short-term contracts without advertising first. The hope is that the audit findings will convince people that government is now largely free of cronyism. This follows allegations that since the election the government has appointed a string of Conservative advisers and ex-staffers into Civil Service posts using expediency rules that allow a few appointments to be exempted from the usual tight recruitment process.

In the first seven months of the coalition, 30 appointments were made without an open competition using short-term contracts. These can be seen as the equivalent of the events based Ministerial adviser positions that support New Zealand ministers.

The joint commissioner is reported as saying that “I don’t mind there being special advisers and I don’t mind there being a few more – at least we know who they are and what they are doing and how they are regulated.”  “Where the anxieties arise is if you get blurring of the lines between the civil service and political advisers and if you get people coming into the civil service who people suspect are political advisers in disguise. That is something that then damages both sides.”

He said that you can never …”relax completely on cronyism and political interference. Particularly on cronyism. There’s a natural tendency in appointment processes for people to want to appoint the people they know and have dealt with. I want to make sure that we challenge that tendency.”

A report published this week recommends major reform to the way ministerial appointments to government jobs are made.

http://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/Downloads/download,3bdc5ed6ff8.html

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/28/civil-service-political-appointments-audit

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July 1, 2011

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Cleaning out the money launderers

30 June 2011

Money laundering in Canada is a largely risk free activity according to the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics.  Although offending has increased, police identify fewer than 20% of suspects, with only one in three being successfully prosecuted.

The former head of the RCMP Proceeds of Crime program attributes the cause to a weak investigation and prosecution process. Yet the RCMP estimates that up to $15 billion is laundered through the Canadian financial system each year.

The Public Prosecution Service  justifies the low success rate because of the complexity of money laundering cases, which involve long and arduous trials. However Police funding to combat money laundering has not changed in 15 years, despite operating cost increases over that time.

“On paper, Canada has built a Rolls-Royce when it comes to fighting money laundering.” It has an elaborate system of regulations and reporting agencies.  “But we forgot to put in the engine – an effective law enforcement that can take on these complicated cases.”

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June 30, 2011

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