State Services Commissioner's preface

My aspiration is for all State servants, working together, to make our system of State Services world class. This means achieving excellence in serving the government of the day and in delivering services to New Zealanders¹ in a way that improves their lives. The Development Goals for the State Services, which I launched in 2005, provide a framework, now looking out eight years, for a transformed State Services. The framework sets goals and milestones for all State servants to achieve this transformation through actions and innovation to improve our overall performance. It is also important that we measure progress and tell the story of how well we are doing and where we can continue to improve. Increasingly, we will encourage agencies to publish indicators and benchmarks that show regular progress towards achieving the Development Goals across the State Services and where we need to focus our efforts.

In 2005 we set ourselves an ambitious set of milestones for 2007, which I am delighted to report we have almost fully achieved². Progress against this first set of milestones is discussed in detail in the following sections of this report. We now have a baseline for measuring our performance so that we can judge where we need to improve and assess our performance over time.

In 2006 the State Services Commission (SSC) published the first State of the Development Goals Report 2006, which established the platform for measuring progress. Over the last year the SSC has built on the momentum set out in the 2006 report and continued to develop the direction and effectiveness of the Development Goals programme. The State of the Development Goals Report 2007 focuses more deliberately on transforming our State Services. To provide a broader focus, a new goal Value-for-Money State Services has been added and the two 'people' goals have been merged into one Employer of Choice goal. The milestones for 2010 have been revised and a new set of milestones for 2015 has been established.

Our colleagues in the Treasury and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet have joined with the SSC to provide leadership of the Development Goals programme in the future. This is part of a new joint approach by the central agencies to provide clear expectations of performance for the leaders of State agencies. This leadership and vision is critical. Just as critical are the engagement and collective resolve of all State servants to ensure that, working together, we continue to build an efficient, effective, and trustworthy State Services to improve the quality of people's experience of government services.

The results we have seen over the last two years indicate that we have much to be proud of: New Zealanders are well served by their State Services. The work of several government agencies is highlighted in this report as an acknowledgement of the good work that has been done. I would like these examples to serve as an inspiration to other State servants to be agile and responsive in delivering services that better reflect New Zealanders' expectations, and deliver the results sought by government.

I am very encouraged by the progress that we have made to date. We should not, however, assume that continuing to improve at the same pace will be sufficient. New Zealanders are expecting more and more of their State Services and we need to accelerate the rate at which we are adapting to meet those expectations.

I would like to acknowledge the work of many people in putting together this report. First, my thanks to Howard Fancy who ably led the conversations with senior colleagues on the 'Refresh the Milestones' project in May and June this year. Also, thank you to those 100 plus chief executives and others from the organisations listed in the front of this report with whom Howard met to discuss how to shape the future of the Development Goals programme. Your enthusiasm and collaborative response to refreshing the milestones helped convince us that we needed to stretch higher and wider to achieve improved performance. Your conversations with Howard also underscored the progress we are making towards the goals. Finally, my heartfelt thanks to my own staff, especially Lynda Bowater and the team of writers, for their work in producing this report and their commitment to achieving world class State Services in New Zealand.

Mark Prebble
State Services Commissioner

¹ In this report, 'New Zealanders' includes New Zealand citizens and residents as well as any individual wishing to access information or a service provided by a New Zealand State Services agency (for example, those seeking to immigrate to New Zealand).

² The milestone not fully achieved was under the goal Accessible State Services 'No wrong door - any New Zealanders accessing government services will be referred appropriately to the agency best able to address their concerns'. From our research, there is evidence of a small number of inappropriate referrals of clients by State agencies.