December 2020 summary of achievements

Engagement with Parliament
(4 Milestones)

Improve public understanding of how Parliament works and increase public engagement with it.

October

Released

• spotlight on Elections video
• general knowledge quiz on elections
• highlights of the 52nd Parliament video
• short video about the different agencies at Parliament and their functions.
• released “Parliament 101”.

November

• launched the ‘create your own parliament’ tool
• the Opening of Parliament events were delivered, two videos were released explaining the significance of the events for our democracy
• implemented the Standing Orders review recommendations:
  • enhanced capacity for petitions
  • more time for non-legislative business
  • remote committee meetings.

December

• released Spotlight video on the Floors of Parliament.

2 Milestones completed

2 Underway

Youth Parliament
(5 Milestones)

Improve understanding among young people of how Parliament works and highlight topics that matter to young people.

All milestones have been completed.

School Leavers Toolkit
(6 Milestones)

Young people can access the civic and financial literacy, and workplace skills, they need to succeed, before they leave schooling.

• MoE have created a mihi video to welcome young people to the School Leavers’ Toolkit.
• MoE continue to review and create new content for the School Leavers’ Toolkit on a two-monthly basis. The ‘Taking care of myself’ section of the website in January was developed and new pages on managing stress and anxiety, maintaining connections after secondary school and mindfulness are being updated
• In March MoE will add a section on Te Tiriti o Waitangi for the Government and Voting section and adding information on activism.
• MoE are engaging a digital marketing organisation to boost the social media presence of the School Leavers’ Toolkit.

4 milestones completed

1 milestone under way

1 milestone delayed

Accessibility of Secondary Legislation (3 Milestones)

Make New Zealand’s secondary legislation readily accessible.

• The Secondary Legislation Bill has progressed through its second reading stage. Further amendments will be proposed to the Bill at the Committee of the whole House stage, mostly to make sure that it is kept up-to-date.

All milestones are underway.

Public participation in policy development
(4 Milestones)

People experience a more responsive and collaborative approach to public participation when policies are developed.

They consider their concerns, diversity of views, life experience, and time are valued in the policy process.

During the quarter three of four Milestones were completed.

• Finalised and published a revised community engagement section of the Policy Methods Toolbox
• Finalised and published:
  • Community Engagement Decision Tool to assist with choice and design of engagement approach
  • Guide to Inclusive Community Engagement
  • Good Practice Guide for Community Engagement
  • Principles and Values for Community Engagement
  • Getting Ready for Community Engagement
  • Selecting Methods for Community Engagement
• Developed and shared case studies documenting New Zealand innovation success stories:
  • Farming Systems Change Project – Ministry for Primary Industries 
  • Criminal Justice Reform Programme - Ministry of Justice
  • Digital Identity Project – Department of Internal Affairs
  • Healthy Homes Initiative case study –the Southern Initiative, the Ministry of Health and the community
  • Seven case studies profiled by the Auckland Co-Design Lab
• With the Ministry of Education prepared a case study of community engagement on the Pacific Education Strategy Action Plan
• Finalised and published the write up of the ‘live’ Demonstration Project Report on the Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy and Action Plan

3 Milestones completed.

Final Milestone underway.

Service Design
(4 Milestones)

(All of Government Service Design Standard Implementation)

People experience more responsive, open, citizen-centric and user-focused service delivery.

Interviews have been conducted with participating agencies about their experiences piloting the Standard. The following themes emerged:

• Changes to the structure and language of the Standard are required to make it easier to understand and implement
• Work needs to be done to make it implementable. It needs measurable metrics for principles. There is also a lack of information on the ‘how’ of implementing it.

Successful implementation of the Standard would also require support and advice, eg a skilled support team and additional frameworks like a Digital Maturity Model.

An ‘outside in’ view comes from the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB).

1 milestone completed

2 milestones underway

1 milestone no longer applicable

Official Information
(3 Milestones)

Improve the availability of official information by:

providing advice to the Government on whether to initiate a formal review of official information legislation

progressively increasing the proactive release of official information.

OIA Review

• Before the 17 October 2020 General Election, the then Minister of Justice indicated interest in a review of the Act, subject to Cabinet decision on the scope and timing made in the next Parliamentary term.
• The new Minister of Justice is assessing what work within the Justice portfolio should be advanced this term – including the potential for a review of the OIA.  

OIA Statistics

• The latest Official Information Act (OIA) statistics were released. Over the period, agencies completed 25,332 official information requests, a sharp increase in volume of nearly 5,400, or more than 27%, on the previous six months. They responded to 97.2%, of requests within legislated timeframes.
• Agencies published 1,876 OIA responses from July to December 2020, compared to 1,233 in the previous reporting period to June 2020, a 52% increase. The number of OIA responses published is 65% up on the first six-month period of the National Action Plan.

1 milestone completed

1 milestone under way

1 milestone delayed

Review of Government use of Algorithms
(3 Milestones)

Ensure New Zealanders are informed and have confidence in how the government uses algorithms – automatic decision-making processes used by computer programmes – to identify patterns in data.

• Continued working with agencies on implementing the Algorithm Charter and sharing learnings with international networks on an ongoing basis.
• A review of the Algorithm Charter for Aotearoa New Zealand will be conducted after July 2021.

2 milestones completed

1 milestone underway

Visibility of Government Data Stewardship Practices (4 Milestones)

New Zealanders:

understand how government is managing, using, and protecting their data and be able to hold government to account.

have confidence and trust in the management and use of data that government holds on their behalf.

• There is a diversity in data stewardship awareness, practices, and maturity across government so it will take longer than anticipated to achieve consistent and transparent data stewardship practices.
• A report on the successes and barriers to data access and use across government during the response to the COVID-19 pandemic is being prepared. This report recommendations focus on improving data findability and access, identifying the most important data, supporting collaboration, clarifying governance roles, fostering expertise-based networks, and helping data users navigate privacy, security, and ethical considerations. 

1 milestone completed

1 milestone under way

2 milestones delayed

Monitoring the effectiveness of public body Information Management practices
(3 Milestones)

Make the management of government information more visible and transparent by developing and implementing a monitoring framework. The framework will support public reporting on the effectiveness of information management.

Completed

Authoritative Dataset of government organisations as open data (8 Milestones)

People can access to authoritative, open data about government agencies and their roles, learn more about how government is structured, what agencies do, and be able to reuse the open data in new and innovative ways. 

Data Model of Machinery of Government

• Five workshops have been held, focused on the data held by the Cabinet Office (e.g. Ministerial lists and portfolios, Cabinet committees). The workshops were very well attended by a range of government officials and experts from civil society, the private sector and NGOs.

Open standards

• Progress is being made in landing on an open standard for the data set(s).
• Work being done in the local council archival community to use Records in Contexts Ontology to describe local councils organisations, has been shared with the group.
• There is also a focus on using linked data to enable relationships between the data to be expressed, along with flexibility in scaling. 

2 milestones completed

6 milestones underway

Open Procurement
(3 Milestones)

People can easily find, and access published GETS information for contracts awarded by government agencies that are subject to the Government Rules of Sourcing. This will increase the level of trust the public has in procurement, as it will be possible to analyse what contracts government agencies are awarding, what the expected spend is and which businesses have been awarded contracts.

Completed