Open Government Partnership New Zealand National Action Plan 2018-2020
Progress report to: June 2019
Commitment 10 progress report: May – June 2019
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
Commenced: July 2018 – December 2018
Commenced: Completed
Milestone 2
Communication and engagement: the proposed framework and its potential options will be consulted on with regulated parties and other potential users
Commenced: July 2018 – July 2019
Progress: Completed
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)
Commenced: April 2019 – July 2020
Progress: Underway
What we have been doing
Survey
- Confirmed survey questions that align to the mandatory Information and records management standard and Public Records Act 2005
- Acquired SurveyMonkey to deliver the survey
- Sent out first round of user testing starting 01.04.19 completed 19.04.19
- Sent out second round of user testing starting 20.05.19 completed 28.05.19
- Assessed feedback and made amendments to survey questions
- Sent survey invitation to Public Offices and Local Authorities and various communication to all audiences
- Rolled out survey (17 June 2019) with close off date 8 July 2019 (Milestone 3)
- Seeking data analysis expertise for survey analysis and reporting phase (July-Sept)
- Started drafting content plan for the report on survey findings and developed concept proposal for report design and layout
Audit
- Begun Design Document/Concept Brief/Business Case/Communications Plan
- Researching and setting up testing of a monitoring tool for audit
- Researching audit providers
- Continuing discussion on Maturity Frameworks
How we are including diverse voices
- The survey will provide a view of information management performance across the sector and inform 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 will be published in the Chief Archivist’s Annual Report on the State of Government Recordkeeping. The findings might indicate areas of concern where recordkeeping does not support government accountability if it does not reflect diversity in the community.
- We engage with concerned members of the public if there are issues of potential breach of compliance with Public Records Act 2005. This engagement will help 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).
- The report on findings will be publicly available through our website
- The raw data from the survey will be released as a dataset on the Open Data NZ platform (www.data.govt.nz)
- Through the next Chief Archivist’s Annual Report on the State of Government Recordkeeping
What’s next?
- Analyse survey results and publish report on survey findings
- Engage with local government to test appetite for voluntary audit
- Complete investigation of monitoring tool options, and acquire a solution
- Progress audit programme design (ie confirm preferred approach)