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Commitment 10 progress report: December 2019

Open Government Partnership New Zealand National Action Plan 2018-2020

Progress report to: February 2020

Commitment 10: Monitoring the effectiveness of public body information management practices

Lead agency: Archives New Zealand (Department of Internal Affairs)

Objective: To make the management of government information more visible and therefore transparent by developing and implementing a monitoring framework that supports public reporting on the effectiveness of information management by central and local government agencies.

Ambition: New Zealanders and public agencies will be able to see the standards for management of government information and the rates of progress central and local government agencies are making towards meeting those standards.

OGP values: Transparency and Accountability

Milestones

Milestone 1

Develop a proposed monitoring framework that reflects the Information and Records Management Standard and includes a suite of consistent and relevant measures to enable public visibility of the effectiveness of agency information management. This could include technology to enable a whole-of-system view of government information holdings and the effectiveness of its management

Start/End dates: Commenced July 2018 – December 2018

Progress: Complete

Milestone 2

Communication and engagement: the proposed framework and its potential options will be consulted on with regulated parties and other potential users

Start/End dates: Commenced July 2018 – July 2019

Progress: Complete

Milestone 3

Rolling it out. Ensuring that the implemented monitoring activity is useful for, and easily used by, the regulated agencies to improve performance and that a common view of results is available to all stakeholders (including the public)

Start/End dates: April 2019 – July 2020

Progress: Underway

 

What we have been doing

 Survey

  • The survey aligns with the objective of Commitment 10 by providing us with better insight into public offices’ IM practices. This will enable us to make the management of government information more visible and transparent to the New Zealand public, supporting the Open Government Partnership values of transparency and accountability.
  • 254 organisations were surveyed:
    • 176 public offices (POs)
    • 78 local authorities (LAs)
  • The 2019 survey did not include all of the entities covered by the PRA; notably school boards of trustees, Ministers, council-controlled organisations, council-controlled trading organisations and local government organisations. Options for expanding the survey coverage will be considered in the coming years.

Response rates

  • We recorded 228 responses, making the overall response rate of nearly 90%. Of public offices, 168 responded (95% response rate), as did 60 local authorities (77% response rate). The Government Communications Security Bureau and New Zealand Security Intelligence Service responses are not included in the analysis and results publication.
  • The survey findings report (PDF 2.10 MB) was published on 29 November 2019

Dataset

  • The survey results are published as an open dataset and available on data.govt.nz as a companion to this report. The dataset has already been used by media for analysis and reporting to inform the public

Report on the State of Government Recordkeeping

  • As part of the survey design, we selected five key indicators to measure the overall state of government IM and provide a high-level perspective on whether IM within the public sector was improving, deteriorating or remaining stable. This high-level summary is included in the Report on the State of Government Recordkeeping 2018/19. The five key indicators cover: governance; resourcing; high value and/or high-risk information; building IM requirements into business systems; and active, authorised destruction of information.

Audit

  • Established reference and user testing groups
  • Progressing projected recruitment to support audit for the future years
  • Developing high level capabilities required of a monitoring tool for audit
  • Researching audit service providers
  • Continuing work on maturity frameworks

How we are including diverse voices

  • The survey has provided a view of information management performance across the sector and informed our audit programme. While public sector agencies serve and represent diverse communities, this programme is not directly engaging with those communities. Findings from survey and audit were published in the Chief Archivist’s Annual Report on the State of Government Recordkeeping (tabled at Parliament). The findings indicated areas of recordkeeping focus that need to be improved upon to support government accountability.
  • We engage with concerned members of the public if there are issues of potential breach of compliance with Public Records Act 2005. This engagement helps us to identify issues across the system.

How we are keeping diverse communities informed

  • Current updates on the Archives New Zealand website
  • Presentations delivered to audiences from IPANZ (Institute of Public Administration New Zealand) and ALGIM (Association of Local Government Information Management)
  • Presentations delivered to Executive Sponsors and Information Managers on the survey findings report in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland
  • The survey findings report is publicly available through our website
  • The raw data from the survey was released as a dataset on the Open Data NZ platform data.govt.nz
  • Through the Report on the State of Government Recordkeeping 2018/19

What's next?

  • Engage with local government to test appetite for voluntary audit
  • Complete investigation of monitoring tool options, and identify a solution
  • Progress maturity framework

Links – Evidence of progress and milestones achieved

New Zealand's Plan