School of Government · Te Kura Kāwanatanga: Institute for Governance and Policy Studies: Working and Policy Papers

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://ir.wgtn.ac.nz/handle/123456789/21219

The Institute for Governance and Policy Studies (IPS) fosters discussion, research and publication of current issues of domestic and foreign policy. We particularly link academic research and public policy by providing opportunities for independent and detached study, and for neutral and informed discussion of important and relevant issues. Our goal is to engage the broadest possible range of informed opinion, particularly in drawing people together from the universities, the public service, the business community and the wider public community. Our three catchwords might be summed up as study, engage, inform.

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Open Access
Authorising Environment: Mapping Role Designation and Practice in the New Zealand Model- A review of the New Zealand literature
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2011) Eppel, Elizabeth
The starting proposition for the Authorising Environment strand is that reform of public management system to date has been a one way street. By and large reform has focused on how public organisations set, manage and report their performance, paying insufficient attention to the role of the authorising environment, such as ministers, parliament and the media. Recent international analyses of public management reform identify authorising agents as the ‘missing piece’ in system design and performance, emphasising, for example, the formal role of politicians and legislators in setting performance criteria and their absence of understanding and inconsistent levels of utilisation. It is taken for granted that public sector reform revolves around both normative and descriptive suppositions that the signals sent by authorising agents matter within the design and operation of public management systems, and yet we know precious little about how this part of the system actually works. The authorising environment is an ongoing project, which explores the missing link in systemic public management reform: the role expectations for ministers and the question of what should (or can) be done to modify the way ministers and legislators engage with the public management systems that they have installed. This is about both better alignment (by clarifying the expectations of authorising agents and the fit with what public organisations do) and stronger engagement (by examining what can be done to increase conformance by authorising agents with the systemic expectations that they themselves have set). This paper is part of the initial phase of the project: a literature review on what is already known about the role expectations of the key authorising agents – ministers – in the New Zealand public management system. The focus has been on the ‘performance’ framework governing minister-chief executive relations, and has confirmed that this area is under-researched. In the second stage of the project this New Zealand research literature will be placed in the context of the international literature on ministerial role expectations and public management design, as a first step in scoping a research question for empirical study.
Open Access
Collaborative Governance Case Studies: The Land and Water Forum
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2013) Eppel, Elizabeth
Looking at collaborative processes in retrospect is always easier than it was at the time they were first happening. They tend to look more designed, orderly, and less messy than they actually were. In Land and Water Forum case, a number of strands of activity/inactivity and actors came together to construct the beginning.
Open Access
Experimentation and Learning in Policy Implementation: Implications for Public Management
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2011) Eppel, Elizabeth; Turner, David; Wolf, Amanda
Policy objectives often can be simply stated. Yet, policy implementation frequently becomes complex, not only when the problem addressed is complex or wicked, such as family violence prevention, but also when the policy is simply stated, such as raising the GST. In complex implementation, effective organisational and individual practices facilitate learning by experimentation. Practices centre on detecting anomalies and then explicitly incorporating reflections on them in ongoing design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation activities. The research drew on policy and experimentation literature to propose a new framework for describing complex implementation practices, a range of cases studies, and discussions with policy managers. Findings highlight the need for a consistent strategic view of end goals, some means for testing changes, and the capacity to identify and assess results in order to redirect effort. Support for these practices involves ensuring appropriate permission to experiment, early and sustained activity conducted outside the responsible agencies, and open access to multiple sources of expertise. Implementing agencies and the policy management system need to take every opportunity to fully incorporate learning into their understanding of the agency’s role, capability requirements, and future focus.
Open Access
From Complexity to Collaboration: Creating the New Zealand we want for ourselves, and enabling future generations to do the same for themselves
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2018) Eppel, Elizabeth; Provoost, Donna; Karacaoglu, Girol
The purpose of this paper is to change how we approach public policy and implementation for complex problems such as child poverty. The ultimate objective of public policy is to improve people’s lives and wellbeing, now and into the future. Traditional environmental, social and economic policies are clearly failing to generate the changes needed to address the persistent and increasing disadvantage facing many people and the communities they live in. This is unacceptable in a country as rich in human and natural resources as Aotearoa New Zealand. We propose a principles-based policy framework for complex social problems such child poverty. This approach will do more than embellish existing policy. It will help ensure that the intent of policy is realised, through a shared and explicit understanding and a commitment to achieving significant improvements. The government needs to rethink its various roles and consider how it enables local communities to be more transformative for children, their families, whānau and communities. We arrive at this conclusion through an analysis of how complex problems and uncertainty are best managed, and through considering some promising practices which suggest some common underpinning values and practices we can follow. In essence, we propose that the design and implementation process for public policy should be reconfigured to rest on a new set of principles, built on values of trust between government and other agents of change, and of valuing distributed community knowledge, resources and local solutions. This paper derives the following set of six principles from our understanding of the complexity of issues like child poverty, and from our consideration of previous attempts to work effectively in complex policy domains. The Government’s proposed legislation to set targets for ‘significant and sustained’ child poverty reduction, and the elevated focus of government agencies on effective interventions and on learning from locally-generated change, make the time ripe for advancing our thinking on these issues.
Open Access
Governance of a Complex System : Water
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2014) Eppel, Elizabeth
Fresh water is a life-enabling resource as well as the source of spiritual, social and economic wellbeing and development. It is continuously renewed by the Earth’s natural recycling systems using heat from the sun to evaporate and purify, and then rain to replenish supplies. For thousands of years people have benefited from these systems with little concern for their ability to keep up with human population and economic development. Rapid increases in population and economic activity have brought concern for how these systems interact with human social and economic systems to centre stage this century in the guise of a focus on water governance. What do we mean by governance and how might we better understand our water governance systems to ensure their ongoing sustainability? This paper sets out a complex adaptive systems view of water governance. It draws on the academic literature on effective governance of complex systems and effective water governance to identify some principles for use in water governance in New Zealand. It illustrates aspects of emerging water governance practice with some examples from New Zealand which have employed a multi-actor, collaborative governance approach. The paper concludes with some implications for the future evolution of effective water governance in New Zealand. Collaborative governance processes are relatively unfamiliar to New Zealand citizens, politicians and other policy actors which makes it more important that we study and learn from early examples of the use of this mode of governance.

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