progress review of the parliamentary service · 2019. 4. 12. · final debbie francis final...

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Progress Review of the Parliamentary Service

May 2018

An Independent Progress Review against the Performance Improvement Review Framework undertaken by the State Services Commission, the Treasury and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in 2014.

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DOCUMENT HISTORY

Previous Versions Initial Working Draft Performance Horizon

Current Version

Document Authors

Initial Draft for GM 25/05/18 Debbie Francis

Revised Draft GM & ELT 29/05/18 Debbie Francis

Revised draft for GM and Bill Moran Debbie Francis

Final Debbie Francis

Final including Agency Response Debbie Francis and Parliamentary Service

Lead Reviewer’s Acknowledgement

This progress report was requested by the General Manager of the Parliamentary Service to be proactive in reviewing progress in responding to the last formal PIF review in 2014. While this report generally follows a PIF format, it is not a central agency PIF review but rather an independent progress and direction of travel check. The PIF methodology is interview – based and in the case of this progress review I interviewed about half the number of staff and stakeholders I would usually meet with in a full PIF review. Because of this and a condensed time frame, this progress review is light on some areas of core business and organisational management. Specifically, it does not contain updates on the agency’s core business outputs. I am very grateful for the constructive and open spirit with which the Service’s executive leadership and staff entered to this review and for the willingness of the Parliamentary Service’s key external stakeholders and customers to engage in interviews given the many demands on their time. Everyone I spoke to was keen for the Service to succeed and supportive of the fact that it had itself initiated a progress check and a fresh look at the performance horizon. Debbie Francis Independent Reviewer

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Table of Contents

AGENCY RESPONSE .............................................................................................................................. 3

FOUR-YEAR EXCELLENCE HORIZON ................................................................................................... 4 Agency Context ............................................................................................................................................... 4 Environment .................................................................................................................................................... 5 Performance Challenge - Outcomes ............................................................................................................ 6 Performance Challenge – Agency ................................................................................................................ 7 What will success look like?....................................................................................................................... 14

SUMMARY OF RATINGS ................................................................................................................... 15

ORGANISATIONAL MANAGEMENT SECTION ............................................................................... 16 Part One: Leadership, Direction and Delivery ....................................................................................... 16 Part Two: Delivery for Customers and New Zealanders ...................................................................... 20 Part Three: Relationships ........................................................................................................................... 25 Part Four: People Development ................................................................................................................ 27 Part Five: Financial and Resource Management .................................................................................... 31

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AGENCY RESPONSE

The Parliamentary Service’s purpose is to support our members of Parliament and the House of Representatives, and therefore support representative democracy in New Zealand. We are committed to ensuring we do this in a way that enables members to fulfil their roles as representatives and legislators and to support the institution of Parliament. The Parliamentary Service undertook a formal PIF review in 2014. An action plan was developed to respond to the findings with the aim of lifting our performance. This year, we felt it was timely to check in on the progress we are making towards achieving our vision by engaging one of the original independent reviewers to undertake a follow-up review. I would like to thank Debbie Francis for carrying out this review, and all the staff and stakeholders who contributed their time and provided input. The Service welcomes the valuable insights gathered during this assessment and confirmation of the progress we have made over the past three and a half years. We are hugely encouraged by the changes we have made in many of the areas identified in 2014. This report acknowledges the Service has generated a transformative step change in performance, which has modernised and professionalised our operations. As an organisation, we can be proud of how far we have come and what we have achieved. The Service would like to formally acknowledge and thank each and every staff member for their contribution to this transformative step change. The follow-up review recognises the high degree of passion and commitment our staff demonstrate in supporting and enabling our democracy. As a service delivery agency we are a people business, and without the commitment and dedication of our people we would not have progressed this far. This report also identifies areas that we need to continue to focus, and where we can further improve. In addition, it acknowledges the commitment and desire of our people to be involved in how we refresh our strategy and vision. To leverage and harness this passion, our plan for ‘what next’ is taking a different path from responses to previous reviews. We are sharing this report with all staff and seeking out their views on how we can co-create an action plan in response to the report’s findings. Finally, I would also like to acknowledge the core strategic tension that hinders our ability to provide excellent customer service due to the current rules-based, prescriptive legislative framework in which we operate. It is a tension that we have been trying to examine ourselves, but we know that a fundamental change to the framework is not in our control alone. We are ready and open to engage with stakeholders to work through how the legislative frameworks in which we currently operate might be changed and adapted to enable a move to a more principles-based high-trust, high-transparency model. David Stevenson General Manager

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FOUR-YEAR EXCELLENCE HORIZON In undertaking this review the Lead Reviewer considered: “What is the contribution that New

Zealand needs from the Parliamentary Service and, therefore, given what has been done since

the last review, what are the next steps in its performance challenge?

Agency Context The Parliamentary Service supports the institution of Parliament by providing administrative and support services to the House of Representatives, members of Parliament and the agencies working within the precincts of Parliament. The Service is a non-Public Service department that is part of the Legislative branch, not the Executive branch, of government. The principal duties of the Service are defined under s 7 of the Parliamentary Service Act 2000 and are:

To provide administrative and support services to the House of Representatives and to members of Parliament; and

To administer, in accordance with directions given by the Speaker, the payment of funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes.

To assist members in the fulfilment of their roles as legislators and elected representatives, the Service provides members with the tools, staff and working spaces they require to work as effectively as possible. Services are provided to members, both in Parliament and at their out-of-Parliament offices, as well as to other agencies within the parliamentary precinct. The variety of services provided to members includes the provision of personnel services to members in relation to member support staff, security services, provision of information and library research services, public tour support and travel and catering services. The Service also provides a range of shared services to other agencies on the parliamentary precinct, (such as Ministerial Services and the Office of the Clerk), including finance, ICT, payroll and information and research services. As at 31 March 2018, the Service employed 656 staff (637.20 full time equivalent staff). There are two workforces – the events-based workforce (member support and political office staff ) directly supporting and working for the members of Parliament and within the political party offices (59% of staff), and the core workforce that provides a range of services to the House of Representatives, members and the parliamentary precinct (41% of staff ). The Service is funded through Vote Parliamentary Service with planned departmental baseline funding of $59 million for 2017/18.

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Environment In practice, the Service is a much more complex and critical agency than its legislative purpose makes it sound. It operates within a uniquely demanding customer context, in that its services must enable elected members and their staff to operate in the complex, intensely pressured, 24/7 environment of a modern parliamentary democracy with a mixed member proportional representation (MMP) model. Expectations of effective, efficient, anywhere/anytime service delivery on the part of the Speaker, members, other customers and partner agencies are rightly very high. Almost everything the Service does in some way impacts on the practical working of democratic processes and institutions. Its precinct services support the moves across the precinct consequent on elections and changes in member composition. Its security and health and safety services ensure the safety of the precinct, those who work within it and that of those staff working in electorate offices; its ICT supports the work of the House and the out-of-parliament network of members’ electoral offices; its HR supports both parliamentary staff and members’ management of staff, both inside and outside parliament. The work of the Service also includes a stewardship dimension that invests in and protects the health of our democracy. Its visitor services team educates visitors and schools on how Parliament works to help ensure open democracy; its financial management services ensure that taxpayer funds are expended for proper purposes; its library provides impartial information to equip members with the knowledge to perform their duties as representatives; its policy interpretations ensure that members have the administrative, personal and family support they need to perform their duties effectively, and so on. These services are provided against the backdrop of the Speaker’s Directions, which provide guidance on policy and principles of operation. While agency relationships are implicit rather than explicit under the current operating model, the Speaker operates, in practical terms, as both the principal customer and the Executive Chairman of the Service, with the General Manager as a direct report. At the time of the previous review in 2014, the Service was struggling to deliver professional, consistently good quality service and its stewardship mission was undeveloped. In a managerial sense, the organisation was immature and somewhat old fashioned in terms of its corporate functions. It provided relatively poor support to the extensive network of out-of-parliament staff who support members. Over the last four years the Service has experienced a transformative step change in performance that has modernised and professionalised its operations, better clarified its stewardship role and invested heavily in the complex out of office workforce. These changes have been made within a largely static baseline. Having made these gains, the Service now wishes to lift to the next level of improvement by resetting its performance challenge.

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Performance Challenge - Outcomes In the 2014 PIF review, we suggested that the Service needed to focus on improving its customer focus, developing a more strategic people management function and reducing silo-isation and institutional insularity. We suggested that its stewardship role in promoting the workings of democracy was ill-defined. We described the then performance challenge in terms of a need for greater alignment, as below: “Overall the performance challenge for the Service is one of improving alignment: between the vocation of its people and the strategy of the agency; between customers’ needs and service provision; between functional service silos, and between its operational outcomes around service and its stewardship outcome around supporting Parliament as an enduring institution of New Zealand’s democracy.” In response to this earlier PIF review, the Service undertook to focus on six key development themes, as follows:

“We grow and develop our people

Technology is a key enabler

We are customer-centric

We will provide excellent shared services

The workplace is ‘fit-for-purpose’

We work as a parliamentary sector.” Since 2014 and the appointment that year of a new General Manager, the Service has worked very hard on business improvements, including:

More modern and professional approaches to financial management and finance business partnering

A transformation in HR from an old-fashioned transactional function to a more progressive one, as well as an organisation-wide sense of the importance of the people investment

Progress on the journey towards improved customer centricity

An increasingly attractive recruitment proposition

Strong and quite emotional staff engagement (staff describe ‘falling in love’ with the Service’s mission and culture).

Much improved ability for customers to ‘find the front door’ of the Service and efforts to bring the whole of the Service to the client, no matter what portal the client contacts

More family friendly and flexible approaches to workforce management

More mature approaches to risk management

Reduced internal silo-isation and increased connectivity amongst its people

Significant work with staff to understand core business processes and how to make these more efficient and effective

An increased investment in support to out-of-parliament staff

Less insularity in its institutional relationships across the precinct and more visibility of its leaders.

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The leadership and staff of the Service can be proud of these efforts, which taken together, have comprised a significant change programme. The Service is a more progressive enterprise than was the case in 2014. Its internal culture feels more positive and engaged. This has created the platform for the further (and more difficult) change and improvement opportunities that the Service’s leadership, staff and customers now identify for the period ahead, and which are outlined in the section below.

Performance Challenge – Agency

1. Purpose and Targets

Core strategic tension in the model There is a fundamental tension in the purpose of the Parliamentary Service between its perception of itself as a ‘rules-based’ compliance agency that has a role in policing members’ behaviours, and its desire to enable its parliamentary customers and provide them with a high-quality service experience. This tension resonates through everything the Service does but is seldom explicitly acknowledged, either internally or to stakeholders. It now needs to be surfaced, addressed and resolved, in conjunction with the Speaker’s vision for the future. At present, and despite significant recent efforts to improve its customer focus, the Service still operates primarily as a rules-driven agency and views its core purpose at least in part as that of ‘referee’ between members and the Speaker’s Directions or other policies. This compliance focus seems to derive in part from ambiguity around the principal-agency relationship with the Speaker and lack of clarity around the purchase and ownership arrangements under which the Service operates as a Legislative branch entity. It may also derive from the fact that New Zealand’s reporting and disclosure arrangements for MP’s expenses are at the more opaque end of the spectrum compared to those in other Westminster democracies. The focus on rules is exacerbated by the fact that the Speaker’s Directions, the core of which predate the introduction of MMP, are drafted in complex, quasi-legislative prose that can create interpretative challenges. Members and their staff often feel it safer to refer grey letter law matters to the Service for adjudication, rather than to interpret the Directions themselves. To illustrate with a specific example: is the Service’s Finance function a payment agent for the portion of the Vote relating to members or is it responsible for ensuring the scope of ‘parliamentary purpose’, (as per the Members of Parliament, Remuneration and Services Act) is met before it releases funds? Shared clarity on a question such as this; between the Service, the Speaker, Audit New Zealand and members and their staff, would greatly assist the Service in establishing the right flexibility and trust balance in its dealings with customers. At present the Service’s Finance team takes direct responsibility for members’ financial management by routinely challenging every cost coming through where they cannot easily

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see the parliamentary purpose behind the expense. This has huge capability and capacity issues for the team and drags it into small scale disputes on a regular basis. Because of this implicit view of itself as referee, and despite its recent efforts to become more customer centric, the Service appears still to hold to an implicit premise that members will act in self-interested ways unless prevented from doing so. This attitude is not articulated but seems to have accreted in the culture of the agency over time. It drives a focus on detail, complicated policy ruling efforts and one-off, ‘heroic’ interventions by senior managers to prevent ‘mistakes’. It can also drive some complex contortions of the rules to support the demands of an MMP Parliament that reflects our increasingly diverse society. For example, such matters as a member who is a nursing mother or a member with a non-traditional family requiring different forms of travel support, often cause great noise in the system and multiple personal interventions to ‘argue the rules’ that should apply. In most modern agencies, prescriptive, rules-based operating models based on low trust are increasingly being replaced by principles-based models based on high trust, high transparency and high accountability. Under such a model, the examples above would be handled through the lens of “how can we exercise our discretion to support this member to serve, while balancing our obligations to the public?” as opposed to: “the member can’t do this under the rules, so what do we do now?” Decisions once taken, would be readily visible to external scrutiny. To take our earlier example of the Service’s Finance team, in a higher discretion and higher trust model the team would act as a payment agent – ensuring DFA is met, creating and managing payment runs, the P Card system and adherence to budget levels. The Speaker and the Whips would then use transparent reporting and publication of expenses as the tool that ensures accountability. Finance could then focus on being a true business partner to its customers, including educating them on good practice. There are some signs that the Service is starting to become more solution-focussed to meet the needs of members; this progress needs to continue. However, in my view, it must be supplemented by a deeper examination of rules versus principles-based models. Indeed, given the upcoming review of the Members of Parliament, Renumeration and Services Act 2013, the new Parliament Bill that is presently on the Order Paper, and an upcoming Appropriations Review Committee report, it may be time for a complete review of the operating model of the parliamentary agencies as part of any proposed new Parliament Bill. A move in this direction may also necessitate a fresh look at the ontology of the Speaker’s Directions, including consideration of enhanced transparency to heighten accountability. Even if such reviews do not occur it is critically important that all those who work for and lead the Service make a fundamental attitudinal shift; away from compliance and low trust, toward enablement and high trust. Without this change in thinking, customer centricity will be more slogan than actuality.

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In my view it is not the responsibility of the Service to save members from themselves. It is the obligation of the Service to educate and support them and their staff and enable them to make sound decisions that align to the principles underpinning democratic norms and processes. This unresolved tension in the model of the Service needs to be the subject of ongoing internal discourse and engagement with customers. It goes fundamentally to every element of organisational performance: purpose, strategy, culture, operating model and customer service delivery. It makes the leadership of the Service a much more challenging job than it may at first appear. Institutional Insularity As an agency within the Legislative branch of government, the Service remains curiously disconnected from both other legislative agencies and from the wider public service. Regarding the former, it appears still slightly reluctant to reach out and work collaboratively on strategy formulation, customer intelligence gathering and stewardship issues. While strong interpersonal relationships exist, they should be supplemented by clear frameworks for regular joint working. Shared approaches should not be the mercy of temporal relationship dynamics as at present. Because it is not an Executive branch agency, the Service misses out on many public-sector events and development opportunities and has low engagement with central agencies. As a complex agency with unique service delivery challenges and a critical stewardship role it is worthy of more attention (as a talent incubator for example), from the State Services Commission in particular. As an agency with a unique story to tell, and a small agency without deep resources, the Service could also be much more proactive in reaching out to others to understand leading practice and share intelligence and insight. The power of ‘Why’ Given the existential complexity of the Service’s role, most internal interviewees do not feel that the current Service vision to be ‘recognised for excellence and innovation now reflects its core purpose adequately. Some staff don’t know the vision, others see it as too generic and some feel offended that it does not adequately describe the ‘specialness’ of the Service. Several commented that it misses the stewardship obligations of the agency. Most staff think the current vision is too head and not enough heart. It is inwardly focussed and self-referential, when what is needed is a more outwardly focussed and ambitious ‘why’, that connects to the operational outcome of satisfied customers and to the strategic outcome of a well-functioning democracy. When staff focus groups discussed the ‘heart’ of the Service, or the emotional thread that connects all its constituent parts, they talked about ‘supporting democracy’ and ‘enabling members to serve those who elected them’. This enablement is critical as a lens through which to deliver services to members and to Parliament because it focusses on outcomes rather than on inputs and on customer rather than compliance.

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A structured programme of work at ELT, with middle managers and, above all, with mixed groups of staff on the Parliamentary Service’s ‘why’ would be very timely. If this work on vision and purpose can tap into the deep emotional element in the Service culture, it will encourage healthy debate of the core tensions at the heart of the Service, as outlined above. Further, it will assist in unifying across the internal silos, make the Service’s strategy more compelling and thus galvanise the discretionary efforts of its people to enable and support their customers and the institution of Parliament. 2. Business Strategy

Almost all interviewees agreed that the Service is a largely tactical agency, because of its pressured operating environment and the high expectations of its customers for timely and quality service. Most staff and managers would like more space to think about being good stewards, to scan the horizon and to plan for the longer-term. They feel the immediate is crowding out the strategic. As one internal interviewee put it, “every time I try to think about how I could change the model to better enable democratic process, I get dragged back down again into an argument over a specific query or invoice.” Besides improved strategic focus, the Service’s people and key stakeholders also want greater involvement in strategy process. Rather than ‘being consulted’ or ‘being road showed’ with largely finished product, staff, middle managers and other agencies are excited about the opportunity to help co-create the strategy story. They want to harness the diversity of thought within the Service and across stakeholder groups to debate ideas, better prioritise and argue trade-offs. This eagerness to be involved provides an opportunity for strategy development and implementation processes to become more ambitious, more focused and better understood. Staff think that strategy is currently driven by the executive team (ELT) ‘telling’ them the future direction (with inconsistency in the resulting information cascade). Instead they suggest strategy should be co-created against general ELT guidance. Some suggest that the strategy is also insufficiently prioritised (“it’s not a strategy but a collection of shiny projects” said one) because the ELT is not sufficiently collegial or mature as a team to work through prioritisation and trading-off at a deep level. Staff and customers are also frustrated by what they perceive as prolonged debate about strategy performance metrics. Comments like, “let’s just settle on some, agree they aren’t perfect and get on with reporting on them” were quite common. Staff and stakeholders would like to see a periodic ‘progress report card’ for the whole of the Service to ensure that they are keeping their eyes on the big picture, not just the tactical day to day. Some have these at business unit level but want to see an enterprise version. There were frequent comments by interviewees about too little focus on strategy implementation effectiveness, business intelligence and accountability for results. People

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want to see the progress against the plan, as one put it, “in terms of results and lessons learned, not just tactical tick boxing”. The Service should explore some implementation device such as 90-day plans to drive focus, urgency, and accountability. Post period reviews could be used to disseminate results achieved, lessons learned and to recalibrate the risk appetite across the organisation. This approach would give staff and stakeholders a sense of progress and provide better transparency around accountability and performance.

3. Operating Model

Portfolio or integrated? At present, the primary organising principle of the Service operating model is as a collection of specialist portfolios, united under a relatively large ELT. Recent analysis of cross-organisational business processes, the introduction of Case Managers who bring the whole Service to the client and other recent work have started to tilt the model towards integration. Both customers and staff are positive about continuing this trend to focus on horizontal linkages to deliver services, as opposed to vertically silo-ed delivery which the customer then needs to join up. At present however, the Service comprises elements of both portfolio and integrated models. It now needs to land on one and design it very explicitly. If there is to be a further deliberate shift towards a fully integrated model, then the implications for leadership structures and processes are significant. Most interviewees view the current ELT as a collection of silo leaders who work down organisational verticals and then compete for resources. They do not describe a team that is collectively accountable for organisational strategy, implementation and results, and that is comfortable with the contention of ideas, prioritisation and trading off entailed. Leadership development in an integrated model should be focussed, for tier two and three managers, on learning to be ‘on the business, not in it’. The implication may be that the GM and ELT need to lift a level in terms of governance and drive accountability and performance more actively through the tier three cadre. The tier three leaders to whom I spoke felt that the ELT was often operating at too low a level of detail. They did not feel trusted or empowered to get results in a tight loose tight framework. This needs careful thought in light of the upcoming work by HR on a new leadership framework.

A more horizontally focussed organisation would also likely fast track the process redesign work already in flight, as well as introduce some ‘shared frameworks’ or more consistent ways of working across the business. The upcoming work on culture and values will be useful in this regard.

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A common set of training, tools and metrics for customer engagement would also mitigate silo thinking and working and ensure a more seamless, pain-free customer experience. An example worth thinking about is the work undertaken at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) a few years ago on the ‘Customer Way’, designed to provide a common (and mandatory) approach to segmentation, delivery and service performance across NZTE’s 50 plus offices around the world. An integrated operating model in the future would also force some additional questions about partnering with other agencies. A new customer service framework and lexicon for example, could be developed jointly with the Office of the Clerk and Ministerial Services in order that the approach appears seamless to members. Given the current context of legislative and baseline review, it may also be timely to consider whether the current institutional arrangements are fit for future. Other Westminster democracies combine the Service and the Office of the Clerk for example. If the present prescriptive, rules-based model is changed to a principles-based model, with higher discretion balanced by additional transparency, then institutional arrangements may need to be realigned to reflect the new approach, while maintaining the desired separation of judicial and executive powers. A customer-centred, outside-in model Although the Service has tried hard to better understand its customers’ needs and respond to feedback, there is still a long way to go if the Service is to complete the shift to a truly customer-centred model. The work on business process redesign is a positive start and Service staff clearly appreciate its potential to enhance both effectiveness and efficiency, but the Service is not yet at the point where the customer and appreciation for the customer’s context are the place everything starts from and against which all accountability is measured. The Service is still working from the ’inside out’ to the customer rather than from the customer and stakeholder back into the organisation and service delivery. To promote a more outside in view, every staff member in the Service, no matter the business unit, must understand Parliament and its workings at a deep level, so that they appreciate and respect the context for their customers’ needs, concerns and pressures. Core staff need to spend time in the chamber, in select committees and in professional development activity to ensure their work is properly contextualised. At present such contextualisation appears hit and miss, and too dependent on the priorities of individual managers. There are unique challenges in capturing customer voice and working with customers on service design with such an unusual and busy customer base. The Service needs to persist and be innovative on this. Lessons might usefully be taken here from the commercial world. The Service should engage with industry and business to discuss how they use customers to drive their businesses, how they employ social media or Artificial Intelligence for real time feedback and so on. It could consider such organisations as Air New Zealand, or other innovative companies like Xero. The Service should also consider how innovation and design thinking

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might be used in this space…. could it hold a dragon’s den with the innovation community to develop a new service app for example? Currently, customers feel that the level of service is variable depending on who they get and how good that individual’s relationship skills and understanding of the operational context are. Sometimes both customers and staff describe situations where they get a good result, but despite the system rather than because of it, or in a way that requires almost heroic individual efforts. Some of this can be improved via the business process work, but it needs to go further. Some basic segmentation analysis, formalised relationship plans and more clearly defined differentiated service packages are needed. More, and more senior and empowered Case Managers (though customers dislike this title, they like the construct) might also help. Good service should be the norm, not a matter of luck.

Another aspect of a more ‘outside in’ model would be to systematically introduce more external thinking into the organisation, particularly in technically specialist groups such as security and library. Police and the Aviation Security Service could usefully talk to security staff about a variety to topics: culture change, the threat environment, the move to preventive policing, the importance of fitness and so on. Extending the existing joint venturing between the Parliamentary Library, National Library and other knowledge agencies could be advantageous. Finally, the Service should be more systematically ‘intelligence-led’ around its customer service delivery. This entails better data capture, distillation into lessons learned, and design of new interventions based on intelligence and analytics. 4. Implementation (including Change Capability)

As described above, the Service needs to work inclusively with its customers, staff and stakeholders to refine its strategy and resolve core strategic tensions. It then needs to explicitly design the best operating model through which to deliver the strategy. Implementation of the plan must then move into an urgent, highly prioritised, predictable rhythm. In this regard 90-day plans could be a useful device. They need to be cascaded from the medium term strategy, rather than created bottom up by units in isolation. The horizontal trade-offs must be agreed between tier 2 and 3 leaders. Plans must be focussed on a few priorities and measures and accountabilities must be explicit. Plans must balance BAU and change. Managers must use the plans to hold their teams to account for results. Critical to the latter is the pause after the end of each quarterly cycle, for reflection on impact, insights into successes and failures, codesign of the next 90 days, and resetting of risks, risk tolerances and priorities in the context of lessons learned. These impact assessment pauses should be conducted inclusively with staff and customers, to inculcate insights and to promote continued prioritisation and shared focus on results.

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Successful execution is vital and current approaches lack sufficient discipline, consistency and focus. Managers are, in the absence of a clear purpose and vision and a well understood and tightly prioritised strategy, trying to do too much, and to do it within their silos.

What will success look like?

Four years hence, the Parliamentary Service will have a clear and compelling purpose, a tightly focussed strategy, an explicit operating model and a track record of effective implementation and transparent performance reporting. These will have been developed against the backdrop of greater clarity about the institutional arrangements of legislative branch agencies and a likely move to a principles-based approach to determinations which has reduced the previous ‘bad cop’ tensions that surrounded the old service delivery model. By this time the Service will be a much better known and understood agency, with a sterling reputation amongst its customers for first rate service that enables them as members and enhances the workings of parliamentary democracy. The agency will be admired for its deep understanding of its customers and their needs, its proactivity in terms of service delivery, and its focus on enabling and facilitating outcomes. The Service will be an attractive place for public servants and others to work, to gain experience in the workings of Parliament and the delicate balance required between managing according to principles of good democratic process, administrative efficiency and meeting the needs of customers. The Speaker, busy members of Parliament, stakeholders across the precinct and partner agencies will all describe the Service as exemplary: as the provider of seamless and quality customer service, as an enabler and facilitator of democratic processes and as a thoughtful and respected steward of New Zealand’s parliamentary democracy.

Debbie Francis Reviewer

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SUMMARY OF RATINGS

LEADERSHIP, DIRECTION AND DELIVERY

RATING PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT RATING

Purpose, Vision and Strategy Leadership and Workforce Development

Leadership and Governance Management of People Performance

Values, Behaviour and Culture Engagement with Staff

Structure, Roles and Responsibilities

FINANCIAL AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

RATING

Review Asset Management

DELIVERY FOR CUSTOMERS AND NEW ZEALANDERS

RATING Information Management

Customers Efficiency and effectiveness

Operating Model Financial Management

Collaboration and Partnerships with Stakeholders Risk Management

Experiences of the Public

RELATIONSHIPS

RATING

Relationships with Ministers

Sector Contribution

Rating System

Strong Well placed Needing

development Weak

Unable to rate/ not rated

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ORGANISATIONAL MANAGEMENT SECTION

This section updates the agency’s progress on organisational management. Ratings are informed by the scope and scale of the newly articulated performance challenge.

Part One: Leadership, Direction and Delivery

Purpose, Vision and Strategy

How well has the agency defined and articulated its purpose, vision and strategy to its staff and stakeholders? How well does the agency consider and plan for possible changes in its purpose or role in the foreseeable future?

Performance Rating: Needing development

Leadership and Governance

How well does the senior team provide collective leadership and direction to the agency?


Values, Behaviour and Culture

How well does the agency develop and promote the organisational values, behaviours and culture it needs to support its strategic direction?


Structure, Roles and Responsibilities

How well does the agency ensure that its organisational planning, systems, structures and practices support delivery of government priorities and core business? How well does the agency ensure that it has clear roles, responsibilities and accountabilities throughout the agency and sector?


Review

How well does the agency encourage and use evaluative activity?


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Purpose, Vision and Strategy

Although the Service’s published strategy artefacts are impressive, with apparently strong internal capability in this area. In this respect, the Service has come a very long way in the last four years.

However, the organisation may be in danger of confusing the production of good quality external accountability documentation with the simpler strategic materials by which it manages the agency.

As noted in the Performance Challenge section above, to get to a ‘well placed’ rating, the Service now can build on the gains made and to change its strategy process to make it much more inclusive of the perspectives and insights of staff, partner agencies and customers. Its process is currently both top-down and rather insular. Staff and stakeholders will be very receptive towards a more co-creative, outside-in approach.

Also noted above is the need to refresh the agency’s vision and core purpose, to resolve the core tension between being a compliance agency and being an enabling agency, reflect a more integrated business model and tighten strategic prioritisation. I suggest a simple, structured process to refresh the ‘why, how and what’ and to produce a road map for the medium term. The map must balance short term service wins, medium term performance improvements and longer-range stewardship investments.

This should be accompanied by a set of balanced scorecard style performance metrics which are regularly reported on to both internal and external audiences.

On a practical level, the Service needs to create more time and space for its people, especially its leaders, to think and scan the horizon. It must prevent quotidian pressures from crowding out strategy and stewardship. This might be as simple as changed agenda management, changed formats for town halls, or more extensive external engagement. Periodic retreats featuring external speakers should also be regularised.

To move to a ‘well placed’ rating the Service should consider how to:

bring more specificity to its medium-term strategy through simpler measures of ‘what success looks like’ and statements of ‘how we do things around here’ to ensure that they are well aligned to evolving customers’ needs

build its business and customer intelligence to ensure it can anticipate changing customer needs, to continue to evolve, mature and sharpen its own functions and roles through time

consider adopting an integrated portfolio approach, with supporting performance metrics to sharpen and define strategy, build alignment and demonstrate impact. This should clarify how different functions contribute to the Service’s overarching purpose creating much greater line of sight between individual effort and contribution to enabling Parliament

use 90-day cycles to align shorter-term action across the Service and its partners to its medium-term strategy; developing a rhythm of execution that shortens the time taken to deliver specific actions, while improving impact over time, accelerating pace of execution and expanding scale of impact.

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Leadership and Governance

The leadership provided to the service by the current General Manager and other executives is well respected and is credited by staff and stakeholders for the many improvements made since the 2014 PIF review.

However, staff and stakeholders do not perceive the ELT to be operating effectively as a team. They describe a group of disparate individuals, who tend to work vertically downwards rather than as leaders of the collective enterprise.

There is also a perception that ELT is too often engaged in detail, rather than on the big picture, which can disempower middle managers and mean that strategy is neglected. Senior leaders will need to set clear goals and then extend greater trust to their teams to deliver them.

Those interviewed also believed that the current fuzziness around strategic priorities and performance measurement derives from ELT’s challenges in confronting differing views and trading off between alternative investment priorities. As one interviewee described this perception: “because they struggle to go deep and argue about the tough stuff, they tend to not quite decide on something and then move to the next thing. This result is a list of lowest common denominator projects, as opposed to a coherent, courageous strategy.”

I suggest that to become ‘well placed’ here, both the GM and the ELT now need to lift out of the detail, and to invest even more effort in being outward facing and in engaging with customers and partners. The current plan to invest in enhanced leadership coaching will assist with this.

This will also entail an investment in developing the capability of tier three leaders, who need to be specifically trained to lead on an enterprise basis. Once the right capability is secured at this level, these managers should be further empowered to exercise discretion and deliver results.

A well-placed rating here will require:

• aligning the Service’s leadership approach to a ‘tight-loose-tight’ management approach that empowers managers but also requires high accountability

• improved clarity of communication of business strategy, vision and operating model from the GM and ELT to the rest of the organisation and to partners, stakeholders and customers

• strengthened collective leadership and collaboration amongst the leadership team and efforts to drive those behaviours and new ways of working throughout the Service.

Values, behaviour and culture

The Service prides itself on its distinctive culture and its people tend to love their work. This provides an excellent basis from which to build.

It has not yet undertaken a systematic review of its culture and values, though this is planned in the next twelve months. I suggest that this should follow on from the strategy refresh described above and be undertaken as an explicit part of the design of a new, integrated operating model. The Service needs to ask itself questions such as:

When were we at our best, in term of service quality and stewardship?

What are we most proud of doing/being?

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What behaviours did we display when we were at our best?

How could we normalise those behaviours?

What would incentivise them and make them stick?

How should we reward good behaviours and how should we act when values are transgressed?

What does customer-centred mean in practice and what behaviours are entailed?

What is the ‘way we do things around here’ and how can we ensure consistency in this across the business?

This process must be undertaken inclusively with staff and must draw on customer as well as internal insights. It should not be entered without careful planning and a very structured approach, probably facilitated with external support. The senior leaders of the Service must model and embody the desired values and behaviours in al that they do.

To be ‘well placed’ in this dimension, the Service will need to:

use new ways of working across the organisation and with partners to drive understanding and shared culture and values that are consistent with a customer driven organisation

require all managers to consistently model the values, behaviour and culture that align with its vision and strategy

be far more explicit about what behaviours and culture will underpin the Service’s success and ensure that people who bring those behaviours and culture to life are rewarded accordingly.

Review

As noted above the Service has an opportunity to build on the expertise of its strategy team to further enhance its evaluative capability.

This will mean more innovative penetration and capture of customer insights and intelligence, better lessons learned mechanisms and the application of analytics to identify and design policy and practice interventions to improve service, enable customers and deliver on stewardship obligations.

The Service should investigate innovation and design thinking tools to explore opportunities for service improvement that are non-linear and more creative and agile. If it can align projects to risk tolerances, it can identify some areas where it is safe to pilot, experiment and fail fast if necessary.

To improve its rating in this area, the Service will need to:

build the business and customer intelligence to ensure it can anticipate changing customer needs, to continue to evolve, mature and sharpen its own functions and roles through time

review, on a systematic and continuous basis, its products, systems and processes through the eyes of its customers

clarify intervention logic and desired impacts when programmes are initiated so they set the baseline for future reviews.

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Part Two: Delivery for Customers and New Zealanders

Customers

How well does the agency understand who its customers are and their short and longer-term needs and impact?

How clear is the agency’s value proposition (the ‘what’)?


Operating Model

How well does the agency’s operating model (the ‘how’) support delivery of Government Priorities and Core Business?

How well does the agency evaluate service delivery options?


Collaboration and Partnerships

How well does the agency generate common ownership and genuine collaboration on strategy and service delivery with partners and providers?

How well do the agency and its strategic partners integrate services to deliver value to customers?


Experiences of the Public

How well does the agency employ service design, continuous improvement and innovation to ensure outstanding customer experiences?

How well does the agency continuously seek to understand customers’ and New Zealanders’ satisfaction and act accordingly?

Performance Rating: Well placed

Customers

Staff and leaders in the Service are committed to further improvements in customer service, and the current business process improvement work is a useful start towards better understanding the customer journey and the key pain points in critical processes that can be resolved.

At the time of the previous review busy customers struggled to understand where the Service began and ended (vis a vis partner agencies) and how to find the right door to receive the right service. While to some degree this confusion persists, it has been helped by the introduction of the Case Manager model which provides Whips and other customers with a single point of

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contact for the Service, (albeit case managers are probably not sufficiently senior nor empowered at present).

However, basic tools for customer service such as segmentation and channel analysis, and the development of value propositions by segment and service type also need further work.

The Service has a cultural disposition toward escalating customer complaints quickly to senior leaders as opposed to resolving them at the lowest possible level. This crisis resolution activity takes a disproportionate amount of senior leaders’ and the General Manager’s time, at the expense of more strategic work.

As noted in the review section above, these complaints resolution responses tend to be individualistic and relationship-based. There is not yet a systematic approach to capturing learnings and linking them to the design of new approaches which will prevent repeat problems.

The Service also needs to secure better-quality customer intelligence through innovative mechanisms or by improving current systems. The current external survey or Litmus Review has historically low response rates and is disliked by customers. The present low response rate for the Net Promoter Score can probably be attributed to its use via a paper post card system, as opposed to the conventional single click electronic system.

The Service also needs to improve its current CRM system functionality and better connect other systems to it to provide a single view of the customer. There should be no excuse for the Service not to know what the Service knows.

Some Service staff and managers appear quite daunted by negative customer feedback, almost to the point where they have decided that customer dissatisfaction is too endemic to the model to allow for much improvement. They must not resile from drawing on customer data to address difficult questions such as:

How do our customers prefer to engage with us?

What will help us better understand their needs?

When and why do our customers like us?

When and why do they dislike us?

What are their biggest pain points?

Would they use us if they didn’t have to?

How can we nudge customer behaviours in the right direction?

How could we surprise and delight them?

While a promising beginning has been made, this is an area requiring a more systematic, structured, courageous approach to develop a new and explicit framework around customer engagement.

Operating model

The assessment on this dimension differs from that in a conventional executive agency PIF, in that the Service does not deliver, as a legislative branch agency, on Government priorities.

Detailed commentary about the operating model for the Service was provided above in the Performance Horizon section. It is critical that, once the purpose and strategy are refreshed, the Service explicitly designs the new and more integrated operating model through which that purpose and strategy will be executed.

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A simple way of doing this would be to adapt a business models canvas type approach as shown graphically below and engage staff and stakeholders in the design of the new model. Until now the operating model for the Service has evolved rather implicitly or has existed by default, rather than having been deliberately designed to align to strategy and outcomes.

Given the high engagement of the Service’s people, and their willingness to be more involved in strategy process and improved performance, there is an excellent opportunity to involve them in this work.

To improve its rating in this area, the Service should consider:

using business analytics to improve and change the operating model through time, identifying trade-offs, risks and harnessing choice

improving the understanding of what drives results for customers, to continue to refine the service offering and all layers of the operating model

ensure that the its operating model supports strategic alliances with partners to enable effective collaboration for cumulative impact for shared customers.

Collaboration and partnerships

While the Service is much less insular than was the case in 2014, it tends to be connected to partner agencies through relationships at senior levels and via SLAs at lower levels rather than through joint working or specific alliancing and relationship management strategies.

Given the small size and slender resource of the Service and most partner agencies, it would seem logical to undertake more joint working, particularly in areas where capability is hard to secure and retain such as HR, communications, customer analytics and ICT. It is very surprising for example, that both the Office of the Clerk and the Service have invested significantly and well in their strategy and HR functions but have done so on a separate basis.

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There is something in the culture of the Service that makes it a rather introverted place. It need to reach out more, communicate its story more effectively and utilise external insights to support its business improvement efforts.

It also cannot afford to leave its priority relationships, including those with stakeholders and partners, to chemistry or chance. Relationship management strategies should be specifically articulated with key partners and monitored against targeted results.

As noted in the Performance Challenge section above, gIven the current context of legislative and baseline review, now may be the time to consider whether the current institutional arrangements are fit for future. Collaboration could in part perhaps, be driven through structural change.

To improve its rating in this area, the Service should consider:

Increasing the frequency of communications, enlisting partners early on strategy and priorities, and being more visible to ensure consistent leadership and consistent messaging

defining what success for the Service looks like, using simple expressions of it to create a rallying cry for all agencies that support Parliament and sticking with it, so partners can align themselves to the strategy

allaying concerns of partners by having a well-defined value proposition, that complements rather than crowds out others

considering the establishment of a partner advisory group as a precursor to forming strategic alliances. •

Experiences of the public

The Service provides both direct services to the public, such as precinct safety, tours of the precinct, parliamentary TV services and outreach activity about the workings of democracy; and indirect services such as the facilitation of an open and transparent democracy.

While in 2014 this was an area of considerable confusion about what it was appropriate for the Service to do, in 2018 the Service seems more confident about its public facing roles. Outreach services to schools for example, are an area in which creative gains have been made.

However, the preservation of a healthy democracy into the future will require some sophisticated scanning-with partner agencies-of threats and opportunities in the external environment. How will communications and channels need to be protected or changed in the world of ‘fake news’ and social media manipulation? How might future parliaments-in 2030 or 2050-operate in terms of technology and process? What disruptive forces will affect the provision of services and how might they be embraced or protected against?

The Service is neither big enough nor mature enough to hold deep futuring capability in house. Working with others however, it can play a role in ensuring that fore sighting occurs and in mitigating risks and seizing the opportunities that are identified as a result.

The Service could also consider how to make its many rich (and largely hidden) resources more publicly accessible. Many of its staff are resident for example, in arguably one of the most important and beautiful public buildings in New Zealand, which has quite limited access via public tours. It could have other creative uses perhaps, for public service graduate training, a academics in residence and so on. Equally, the Parliamentary Library is a treasure trove with

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presently untapped potential for public outreach on the model of the British Parliamentary Library.

To be strong on Experiences of the Public the Service will need to develop deep insights into the future needs and expectations of its current and potential future customers and stakeholders so it is able to anticipate the interventions that will be required to deliver the requisite lift in New Zealand’s parliamentary performance. It should also consider how to creatively share the heritage and knowledge assets it stewards with a wider group of New Zealanders.

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Part Three: Relationships

Engagement with Ministers

How well does the agency provide advice and services to Ministers?


Sector contribution

How effectively does the agency work across the sector?


Ministers

Aside from the Speaker, the Service has an indirect relationship to Ministers, given the role of Ministerial Services. However, those Ministers interviewed were unclear about the ‘join’ between Ministerial Services and the Parliamentary Service and expressed concerns about the level of (shared) service in ICT.

Past and present Speakers acknowledge the progress made to date and remain highly interested in the performance challenges ahead.

To get to a strong rating, the Service needs to clearly demonstrate to the Speaker the impact it is having on customer enablement and progress against its agreed strategic performance targets. The performance dashboards that it is now using are an excellent start but can be further supplemented by more strategic measures of impact and strategy realisation. If the overall model is to move to a more principles-based approach, then sound analysis to underpin accountability requirements will be critical to support the Speaker.

Sector contribution

As noted above, the Parliamentary Service is still a little isolated from other agencies in its wider sector, such as the Office of the Clerk, the Parliamentary Counsel Office, Ministerial Services, the Remuneration Authority, central agencies and so on. Relationships tend to be either executive level meetings or on an ad hoc basis around issues.

The service delivery relationships centred on the shared service the Service provides to the Office of the Clerk and Ministerial Services (financial management and ICT) are of mixed quality. There tends to be a high level of satisfaction with financial management support and business partnering and a low-level of satisfaction about ICT services.

The Service has quite a private and introverted culture. Given the gains it has made, it can now have confidence in telling its strategy story more broadly and engaging more proactively at a more strategic level.

To be well placed on Sector Contribution, the Service needs to:

be relentless about meeting deliverables and service standards it agrees to in collaboration with others

drive alignment through its organisation, clarify what it will and will not do, so others can get aligned to it to get collective impact

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simplify its communication of its vision, strategy and operating model so others can understand and buy into it.

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Part Four: People Development

Leadership and Workforce Development

How well does the agency develop its workforce (including its leadership)? How well does the agency anticipate and respond to future capability requirements?


Management of People Performance

How well does the agency encourage high performance and continuous improvement among its workforce? How well does the agency deal with poor or inadequate performance?


Engagement with Staff

How well does the agency manage its employee relations? How well does the agency develop and maintain a diverse, highly committed and engaged workforce?


Leadership and workforce development

At the time of the previous PIF review, the Service confronted some serious challenges regarding people management. Unplanned staff turnover was about 25% in the 2014/15 year, the recruitment brand was weak and culture reviews showed poor results. At the same period, the HR function was old fashioned and low in client focus.

It is pleasing to see the modernisation of the People and Culture function, and the comprehensive programme of work that has been undertaken over the last four years.

This has been ambitious and has included the development of new job families and competencies, new approaches to recruitment, a new remuneration system, and a new career and talent management approach. HR reporting dashboards have also been introduced. The work has been professional, systematic and undertaken in constructive partnership with unions.

Most importantly, the triangular employment relationship (between staff, members and the Service as employer) seems to be operating much more smoothly, with good feedback from members on the improved and more proactive support provided by the People team.

However, in some areas the approach to people management seems in danger of being over engineered for the size of the organisation. For example, performance-based pay (unique in the public sector) requires a sophistication around moderation that the Service has not yet quite developed. The same result might be achieved with more active performance management.

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In another example, the career framework, while based on leading practice, is complex and time consuming, particularly when applied to more junior staff.

For the next chapter, the focus for the people and culture team should be on the health and safety challenges before the Service, which include the need to address health, safety and wellbeing issues in out-of- parliament offices and improved reporting systems.

The leadership development framework will also need further development to align it with an integrated operating model and the need for the Service to develop deeper customer relationship skills. As noted above, middle managers would benefit from targeted investment in their abilities to operate across the enterprise in a more autonomous but higher accountability model.

There is a need for strong alignment between the Service’s Leadership and People Development Strategy with its business strategy. Strong technical capability was important to the Service in the past, but the requirements of a more strongly customer-driven organisation require additional skills and capability.

To be responsive to customers’ needs, the Service needs staff with the experience and training that will allow them to play the facilitation role needed of enablers. The old, hierarchical leadership models managing the production and delivery of products and services are no longer likely to be suitable to deliver on the Service’s new vision, strategy and operating model.

More specifically, I also suggest considerable work is needed about the Security workforce, which currently appears akin to the pre-transformation Police and Aviation Security workforces. The Service should explore changes to the roster model to better align it to risk and improve overall workforce productivity.

More work is needed (and currently planned) on diversity in the workforce. While there is now new talent in the organisation, overall the Service still appears relatively monocultural.

Useful steps here could include the development of a bi-cultural policy, a refreshed recruitment proposition for Asian, Pacifica and Maori recruits, and some work on LBGTQI support networks. This was an area that was commented on by staff as an opportunity to reflect the increasing diversity of members and the citizens they serve.

Finally, because the investment in people and culture has been so significant over the last few years, the Service also needs to take care that the People function enables the business, rather than drives it. The new people focus is commendable, but people strategy should follow overall enterprise strategy, not lead it.

To be ‘strong’ on Leadership and Workforce Development, the Service needs to:

• ensure its leadership and people strategy is tightly aligned with and enables a customer-driven, integrated operating model and the refreshed strategy

• ensure that the culture within the People team continues to be one of enabling core business

• align leadership behaviours, competencies and training to the full requirements of a ‘tight-loose-tight’ management approach

• ensure culture change, recruitment strategies and training support an enterprise leadership approach to underpin the new operating model;

• explore more deeply with customers and partners the attributes, experience and competencies required across the organisation to deliver on purpose and strategy.

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Management of people performance

At the time of the last review, performance management was weak and performance management or coaching conversations were happening rarely if at all. Since then the Service has made a considerable investment in a new performance management system called Cornerstone. Managers have also worked hard on clarifying performance expectations, managing poorer performers and better recognising good performance.

A new Code of Conduct has been introduced and union relationships have improved markedly. The relationship with the PSA is open and constructive.

Staff are very positive about their managers’ efforts to praise and recognise good work and to give formative feedback. Senior leaders are making real efforts here.

However, the new performance management system is complex and relatively cumbersome for the size of the organization and there appears to be low confidence, on the part of most staff I interviewed, with respect to the moderation process, which forces a bell curve on overall workforce performance.

The intent of the new system is quite correct, but the Service needs to take care not to create perverse incentives by imposing an overly bureaucratic system or a system in which staff feel they must ‘prove and document’ good performance. All managers need training in coaching skills in order that a consistent approach is taken to developmental feedback and to ensure that the system is used consistently positively across the enterprise.

Talent mapping and targeted professional development approaches can be further extended so the Service can provide differentiated career pathways and professional development options for all its people, from technical experts to generalist staff. Now, training and development are slightly ad hoc with the onus on staff to drive the investment in their own development.

To be ‘strong’ on Management of People Performance the Service needs:

• a real focus on behaviours and values to support the operating model • improved processes for performance moderation and the talent mapping approach • to ensure there is clarity around what success looks like, how to measure success and

how each staff member contributes to that success. Clear line of sight between what each staff member does every day and the Service’s desired impact is essential

• develop the tight elements of a tight loose tight approach as part of its target operating model so individual action is deliberate and aligned across the organisation

• to clarify ’how we do business around here’ and then ensure that it is strongly and consistently led.

Engagement with staff

The Service has planned a culture and engagement review during the next twelve months, including the introduction of a full engagement survey. As noted above, this should be undertaken as a part of the overall operating model design work.

It may also be helpful for the Service to consider the introduction of smaller, more frequent ‘pulse check’ surveys which provide managers with real time feedback on the climate within their groups and allow for finely targeted interventions.

While the level of engagement of staff feels palpably higher and more positive than it did in 2014 on purely subjective basis, there does appear to be an opportunity to create a much

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stronger line of sight between enterprise strategy and the work of individual business units and staff. This can be done, as suggested in the strategy section above, by involving staff earlier and more fully in the purpose, strategy and operating model refresh processes.

Leaders also need to reflect on the behaviours they model to staff. If the Service is to move to a more integrated, customer centred, high trust, high autonomy, results focussed model, then those behaviours need to start in house, and from the ELT and middle managers.

To be ‘strong’ on Engagement with Staff the Service needs to:

• provide more clarity to staff, below the vision level, about what drives the outcomes that are sought and how staff contribute to that. The operating model needs greater definition and staff need to know what success looks like in the organisation and in their areas

• engage staff earlier in identifying issues and possible solutions • consistently model desired behaviours that support collaboration, trust and

innovation • fully test, develop and articulate a people strategy that is conducive to a customer

driven operating model and enterprise strategy • continue to drive diversity of ideas and people to spark innovation and agility in how

the Service operates.

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Part Five: Financial and Resource Management

Asset Management

How does the agency manage agency and Crown assets, and the agency balance sheet, to support delivery and drive performance improvement over time?

Performance Rating: Strong

Information Management

How well does the agency manage and use information as a strategic asset?


Financial Management

How well does the agency plan, direct and control financial resources to drive efficient and effective output delivery?


Risk Management

How well does the agency manage its risks and risks to the Crown?


Asset management

Customers speak very highly of the Service’s performance with regard the management of the rather complex precinct assets. Maintenance planning is proactive, and assets are in generally good condition. The heritage value of assets is carefully considered with a view to the long term.

Considerable proactive effort was recently expended on the development of a long-range accommodation plan involving new premises. This plan is currently on hold. The strategic visioning work undertaken through this process was commendable in its efforts to envisage what parliament might look like and how it might function in twenty to fifty years’ time.

The current planning pause will entail careful management of the existing asset base to accommodate all staff and customers on the precinct while simultaneously upgrading deteriorated assets such as Bowen House.

Day to day asset management in the Service is unusually demanding in that there is frequent movement of personnel, especially in the wake of general elections, and there is a great deal of effort expended to allow members considerable choice and customisation in their physical environments. Viewed from an efficiency perspective, and when compared to commercially managed assets, there is probably too much choice, which drives complexity and cost. Any move to a more explicit standard service ‘package’ will require careful communication with

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customers. At present, most customers appreciate the speed and responsiveness of the services they receive.

As the Service moves to a more integrated operating model, it will also be desirable for all Service staff to be accommodated in a single facility to better promote collaboration and shared identity.

As the work on strategy and operating model recommended above is undertaken, the Service will need to ensure that future asset planning is well aligned with it.

Information Management

This dimension covers IT service delivery and information management on both the customer and corporate sides of the Service.

Since the 2014 review, the Service has developed and largely implemented its ISSP.

However, information technology management is the area customers almost universally point to as being poor or inconsistent in terms of service. Customer reactions around ICT matters are often quite visceral. Customers often like and respect the individuals with whom they deal, but they point to poor processes, lack of consistent service and seeming inability of talented individuals to lift the overall system.

From a service delivery perspective, the demand on the Service’s in and out of house IST teams is intense. Benchmarking data from its external IT service partner shows that helpdesk volume and complexity appear extraordinarily high compared to similar sized executive branch organisations and consequently the number of both help desk and client-side staff is much higher than in many much larger public agencies.

This high level of demand and complexity is contributed to by three elements of the current arrangements, whereby:

the Service has “locked down” the desktop to minimise and protect against security breaches or hacking. While this is conventional in secure government agencies, in the parliamentary context it can mean that members and their staff are dissatisfied with the mandated hardware. They can associate this with the Service ‘dictating’ rather than enabling members’ needs.

Outside the desktop environment, members and staff are able to choose from a wide range of devices, and any software applications. It would be unthinkable in any corporate context to run almost any device and any application anywhere anytime, because it creates complexity, cost and servicing challenges. No matter how good the help desk, no individual can be familiar with every application or operating system in use. Untrammelled choice also creates security risks.

This is further complicated by the fact that parties and members control their own ICT expenditure, as part of an overall funding entitlement. This means that investment decisions and levels are highly variable across members, and parties.

Some criticisms of the Service’s IST function are also unfair, in that it does tend to attract blame when the supporting systems of other agencies may be at fault, does not purchase any hard or software, and is funded on a somewhat ‘bronze ‘level when the choice and complexity on the customer side implies ‘platinum’ service expectations.

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However, where customers are concerned perception is everything and the Service needs to take greater responsibility for overall service improvement and a much better customer experience in this area.

As a part of this, the Service needs to work openly with its customers to bite the bullet on the current operating construct. It should offer a more limited choice of devices and applications to allow better and more consistent service and a more secure information environment.

It makes sense to me that the Service should also hold the budget for such purchases in order they can be more systematically managed and secured.

Meanwhile, the satisfaction of partners in the IT shared service provision is also very low, with partner-agencies referencing a lack of transparency with respect to cost structures and margins, lack of involvement in the recent retendering of the primary supplier contract and unresponsive service.

The current CRM, while recently upgraded, is not yet being used by staff in such a way as to support the more integrated operating model for the Service discussed above. Integration will necessitate an easy to use CRM functionality which provides all staff with a single view of the customer. There is currently still too much off system information and too much in paper file format.

Overall, IT appears to be an area in which the Service appears to have become somewhat inured to intense customer criticism and hesitant to lead much needed discourse on an obviously unworkable operating model that is currently pleasing very few.

An exception to the service delivery problems remains the Library and its provision of information analysis and research to members, which is consistently commented on very favourably. Library service is viewed as consistent, professional and responsive, often under very tight timeframes.

However, there are also opportunities for the Library to undertake more fore sighting about how members of the future will access and share information and consume knowledge. Library staff have a good platform in the form of their medium term strategy from which to think about longer range opportunities.

Overall, regarding IT and information management, the Service now needs to focus on:

• better understanding its costs to serve • making better use of technology and media to enhance services and customer access

to these services • partnering with others to provide services to increase the effectiveness of the service

and/or reduce costs using AOG services and partnership with other government agencies

• with the Office of the Clerk, the upgrading of core ICT systems, such as Parliament TV and the Virtual Parliament

• ensuring that systems and key applications are fit for future, particularly as members and their staff demand greater mobility and optionality

• leading discourse around the optimal operating and purchasing model for ICT hardware and software, with differentiated service and cost options

• further improving service quality, consistency and cyber security through greater standardisation of applications and devices

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• upgrading the CRM system to improve business processes and to ensure it will support the more integrated way the Service and its customers and partners need to operate in future.

As noted previously, the Service also needs to improve its business intelligence capability including the development of improved performance measures and metrics. ICT has a part to play in this.

To be ‘well placed’ for Information Management the Service will need to:

• reaffirm its commitment to consistent, high quality customer service and enablement in ICT

• further develop the CRM to better handle a single view of the consumer and the future needs of the business

• work with its fellow agencies and other strategic partners to gather and share information they all need to understand the current and future needs and expectations of their customers

• develop a comprehensive and insight generating set of performance measures and metrics that will support excellent and innovative decision-making

• value and promote effective information management as a key leadership behaviour, essentially for delivering against a customer-focussed business strategy.

Financial management

Customer and partners are very positive about recent improvements in the financial management services provided to them by the Service’s finance team and by the CFO and the finance business partners. They find reporting prompt, accessible and easier to understand than in the past. Support to members’ staff appears helpful and proactive. Audit ratings are ‘good’.

Strategic financial management tends to get crowded out by day to day transactional pressures and this is an area that should be further invested in if the Service is to lift to a ‘strong’ rating. Improved cost to serve models would be particularly useful to support improvement and innovation in customer service.

To get to the next level here, the Service will need to put in place the business intelligence, performance and risk management systems and processes that can be used to drive resource allocation, effectiveness and efficiency. It appears well placed to do so.

Risk management

The Service has an external advisory Board for risk and has worked hard to improve all aspects of risk assessment, risk management and risk reporting.

While risk reporting at Board level is excellent, and the ELT has a regular regime for deep dives into critical strategic risks, the leadership team may also benefit from more regular and wide-ranging discussions on emergent risks and black swan scenarios. This would be a useful device for lifting ELT out of the detail.

To build on progress to date, deepen maturity of the risk system and move to a ‘strong’ rating for Risk Management the Service needs to:

• develop a more explicit expression of differential risk appetites and tolerances in the organisation.

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• develop more sophisticated strategies to segment risk and locate it where it can best be managed while also allowing needed innovation, experimentation and risk taking to occur.

progress review of the parliamentary service · 2019. 4. 12. · final debbie francis final...

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