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Emerging Issues Programme (EIP)

In 2006 Chief Executives in the public sector agreed to pool funds to enable the IPS to conduct research on emerging longer-term issues of cross-cutting significance to the whole public sector. Since then more than a dozen projects have been funded under the EIP. These cover a wide range of policy issues:

In addition future EIP projects approved to commence over the next two years include:

1. Post-Treaty settlements issues
Potentially the signalled 2014 end of the historical Treaty settlements process ushers in a new era in Crown-Māori relations. But what will these new relationships look like? To help explore these evolving relations, we have set up a joint venture between the Institute of Policy Studies and Te Kawa a Māui (Māori Studies) at Victoria University. Beginning in July 2010 we will be commissioning a set of short papers representing a diversity of viewpoints around each of five questions: The questions are: 

Question 1: How will the Treaty relationship be conceived of in 50 years’ time given changing demographics and the lasting effects of the current historical settlements?

Question 2: What will be the implications of New Zealand support for, and possible ratification of, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples?

Question 3: Should there be separate Māori representation (seats) in parliament and on local authorities alongside other consultative mechanisms?

Question 4: Are iwi in the post-settlement environment on an equal footing after their Treaty settlements, in terms of the types of redress that were on the table and the adherence to relativities at the time of their negotiations? Are settlements ‘fair and durable’?

Question 5: How will iwi/Crown co-management of resources play out? Are there potential conflicts of interest in iwi being managers, guardians and also developers? And how different is this to the Crown being in all three roles? 

For further information click here

Project manager contact details – paul.callister@vuw.ac.nz

2. Ocean Governance: The New Zealand Dimension
New Zealand’s coastal marine environmental is of global significance. With its declaration of an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in 1978, New Zealand's jurisdiction spans over 4.3 million km2 of ocean, and the country’s coastline is in excess of 15,000 km in length. New Zealand’s EEZ is the fourth largest in the world, with an area of about 17 times that of the land mass (or 5.7% of the world’s EEZ). Due to the transitional character of New Zealand’s continental shelf, the coastal marine ecosystems of the country are recognized as part of the world’s top 15 ‘hot spots’ for threatened biodiversity.

Overall, marine governance remains sector-based and fragmented among a range of policies, programmes, and agencies with marine responsibilities. There are 18 main statutes, 14 agencies and six government strategies for marine management and planning. For instance, the Resource Management Act (RMA) provides the framework for development of major national resource and environmental management polices. New Zealand also signed over 13 international conventions with marine implications, including the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS Convention) which was ratified in July 1996.

This project was commissioned by the EIP Steering Group to address the opportunities to improve ocean governance. The major goals of this project are twofold: 1) to promote the scholarly analysis of management options for achieving responsible stewardship of the oceans offshore New Zealand, and 2) to present, on the basis of such analyses, a characterization of the policy tools, options and instruments that can contribute to the consideration by policy makers of alternative, improved ocean management frameworks.

There are two major outputs associated with this project. First, the project will lead to the production of a series of draft “white papers” that will be circulated to policymakers, scientists and stakeholders after the first year of the project. These white papers will be revised based on the comments from the reviewers and organized into a final report that will emphasize the further development of policy change in ocean governance. The final report will incorporate (1) information from interviews of a range of stakeholders and government agencies on the important issues and concerns facing future ocean governance; (2) an assessment of policy tools and instruments that may be needed to address future marine ocean governance issues; (3) a characterization of important cases of marine issues; and (4) a comparative case study of other national and international efforts in integrated ocean governance.

In addition, the project will encourage the exchange of information and ideas about future ocean governance in New Zealand. Over the course of the next two years, this project will support four public workshops tentatively entitled “Forum on Oceans, Coasts and Islands” to discuss major themes in ocean governance of the EEZ and continental shelf.

Project manager contact details – mike.mcginnis@vuw.ac.nz

3. Future State 2 - Directions for Reform of the New Zealand public management model
The Future State Part 2 project will investigate new ways the public sector will need to work to address emerging complex policy problems. Issues to be considered include how accountability and performance management systems need to be adjusted to better facilitate cooperative working relationships between public sector entities. A primary objective is to consider directions for reforming the public management system. Set out below is a brief summary of the Future State Part 1 project followed by background on the Future State Part 2 project.

Future State Part 1

Future State Part 1 was an exploratory exercise designed to identify the longer- term public policy challenges facing New Zealand. While the particular concern was to identify potential public policy issues for the EIP work programme, Future State Part 1 also reviewed the ability of the public management system to respond to these issues. A final report from the Future State Part 1 project can be accessed by opening the following hyperlink: http://ips.ac.nz/publications/publications/show/295

In brief, four key challenges emerged from a scan of the issues:

Future State Part 1 identified two priority public management system changes:

Future State Part 2 (see below) will develop the directions for reform of the public management system to support new ways of working in response to the challenges identified in Future State Part 1. The key conclusions from Future State Part 1 include that a focus on bottom-line performance of individual public organisations will not generate the step changes required to address the challenges discussed above. Greater focus will be needed on whole-of-system performance in addition to initiatives designed to improve performance of the component parts. The findings from the EIP project on Managing for Organisational Performance will provide a useful evidence base to address the issues of cross-organisational working and joint accountability.

Other jurisdictions are grappling with similar issues. Reflecting on Canadian experiences in particular, the former head of the Privy Council Office Jocelyne Bourgon suggests “a commitment to system-wide and societal results would require three things:
 

Future State Part 2

The Future State Part 2 (FS2) project has a research and a practical policy goal. The practical goal is to identify how the ‘centre’ can support the new ways of working that are required for the public sector to respond effectively to emerging complex problems and how line agencies can promote new ways of working (e.g. moving from silos to hubs). Specifically, this will focus on how policy will need to be developed and implemented, and how accountability and performance management systems need to be reframed to accommodate these new ways of working

To achieve this policy objective the project must first synthesise existing research on how managers and front line staff actually respond to emerging complex problems, and what encourages and what inhibits new ways of responding and working.

It is proposed that these project goals will be addressed via a number of methods, including:

The outputs of Future State Part 2 will include:

The key milestones for Future State Part 2 include:

Project manager contact details – Derek.gill@vuw.ac.nz

4. Citizen-centred alternative service delivery
Experience in both the United Kingdom and, more recently, in New Zealand has shown that increased investment in capability and service delivery has not necessarily resulted in corresponding improvements in performance. In the United Kingdom, the Blair government responded to concerns about disappointing public sector performance by placing greater emphasis on choice and competition.

The public debate in New Zealand is framed narrowly in terms of the privatisation of services, whereas in a range of sectors (health, education, welfare) we already have a wide variety of service delivery arrangements in place. At every level of the system, there are choices about the model that supports service provision (financing, funding, nature and mix of providers, client selection) as well as choices about the mode (service delivery, facilitation, co-production etc.). Taking all these choices together, they generate a wide spectrum of options for changing the nature of user engagement, and for achieving better outcomes by generating innovative forms of service delivery.

Work in this area would summarise the dimensions of choice in alternative modes of service delivery and the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches in generating innovation and enduring performance improvement. This could then be applied to a particular domain such as dependent older people to explore ‘welfare pluralism’ in practice.

Possible project – Identify the critical factors that define the role and limits of alternative service delivery models in adding public value, and apply those critical factor in a particular domain (such as dependent older people).

Project manager contact details – Derek.gill@vuw.ac.nz

5. Reframing the practice of policy
Current modes of policy development have been developed to respond to ‘technical’ problems solvable by ‘expert’ solutions. There have been some marginal changes to the approach to policy, with increased modelling capabilities, and increased use of surveying and consultation instruments, but the approach has essentially remained intact. While suitable for simple or technical problems, that approach to policy needs to be revised and policy practices need to be reframed if they are to be equal to emerging challenges. What would policy development look like generally, and what would its practices be, if multiple and incommensurate values, complexity, uncertainty were embraced instead of obfuscated, and if moreover, the increasingly sophisticated data analysis that is now possible was also brought to the task?

Many of the policy outcomes that will be front of mind for government (reducing obesity and frailty, intergenerational equity) cannot be achieved by provision of public services alone, but will require the active contribution of citizens (co-production). Moreover, there is significant untapped potential in the data analysis capabilities currently available. Policy solutions need to adopt 21st century tools and new ways of working, harnessing the knowledge and creativity of citizens in problem solving, policy and service design to create outside-in, citizen-centred, and business-centred government. In particular, policy will need to enlarge its frame to encompass co-production and co-design, while protecting probity and guardianship of information.

• How would policy practice need to shift to improve the ability of public services to understand and respond to the way different groups experience their world and build constructive solutions with those groups?
• What skills and dispositions would policy analysts and their managers need, in order to understand different types of problems and work from multiple perspectives?
• What adjustments are needed to incorporate these approaches?

Possible project - How does policy practice need to change to respond to an increasingly diverse populations and increasingly complex problems?

Possible sub-themes - What implications will this have for:
the education and training of analysts and advisers and
other public management processes to ensure they support new policy practices?

Project manager contact details – Derek.gill@vuw.ac.nz

 

© 2006 Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand