Officials Group
MEETING MINUTES
Date / time: Thursday 5 October 2017, 10am-11am
Venue: Ministry of Education, Bowen Street
Officials Group participants: Auckland Council, Department of Internal Affairs, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Parliamentary Counsel Office, State Services Commission, Statistics New Zealand, and the Treasury.
Independent Reviewer: Ms Keitha Booth
Agenda & Topics
1. Welcome
Apologies noted from the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Te Puni Kōkiri. Welcome to the new representative from Statistics New Zealand.
Open Government Partnership International in the June 2017 Steering Committee meeting approved the following changes to countries’ National Action Plan cycles:
- The formal deadline for National Action Plans has been pushed back by two months to August 31. This date will apply to New Zealand’s National Action Plan 2018-20.
- The next self-assessment report will be due on November 30 2018 –an additional 90 days later compared to the previous cycle.
More information is available from the International Open Government Partnership website: www.opengovpartnership.org
2. Independent Reviewer, Keitha Booth
Ms Booth led a session confirming accuracy, and checking agency’s engagement with stakeholders since the Mid-term self-assessment. Progress on specific commitments was discussed, including:
- Feedback on Commitment 4 will close 20 October: https://www.loomio.org/g/FfqHtMDG/open-data-dashboard. The government data dashboard prototype is available: https://www.data.govt.nz/blog/open-government-datadashboard-prototype/.
- The State Services Commission have published the second set of OIA statistics covering 111 different government agencies: http://www.ssc.govt.nz/official-information-act-statistics
- The State Services Commission has developed an official information capability development toolkit to help agencies review their capability to manage official information and comply with the letter and spirit of the Official Information Act. This is now available online: http://ssc.govt.nz/official-information-toolkit.
- The completion of Commitment 7 – improving policy practice.
3. Discussion on public submissions for the Mid-term self-assessment
Three submissions were received on the Mid-term self-assessment:
- Transparency international
- Public Service Association
- The Council of Trade Unions
Some agencies have taken individual steps in regards to the feedback received:
- The Policy Project team at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet have agreed to publish material suggested by the PSA as additional support alongside their policy toolbox.
- Treasury will supplement these submissions with interviews received via their own user research to seek the views of a number of its stakeholders (including members of TINZ, CTU and the PSA).
- The Department of Internal Affairs will process the feedback from TINZ about the Government Online Engagement Service tool, as part of wider user research.