Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche has been asked by the Government to change the way the public service operates. Te Mahinga Ora spoke to Sir Brian eight months into his term.
Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche, who was appointed in November 2024, is being more actively involved in collective bargaining than his predecessors.
Sir Brian, in an interview with Te Mahinga Ora, said that he would be actively overseeing significant collective negotiations.
He is currently involved in the primary teachers bargaining and says while there is a group of people working on the agreement, he sits at the table when the Secretary of Education is involved.
The Commissioner has the delegation to oversee bargaining but in the past this was usually delegated to government agency chief executives.
Now with funding constrained the Government wants more centralised oversight of bargaining, Sir Brian said.
“Ministers wanted a more direct involvement from me at the table so that I was much more authoritative to them about the real-world dynamic of what's going on.”
Does that mean his involvement is to limit pay settlements? “I am there to act as a guardian of the taxpayers’ money”.
Changing the public service
While he will be involved in bargaining, Sir Brian says his main mission is to start transforming the way the public service operates.
“I think our system works really well and that people are really good, but you sort of get a sense it's under increasing pressure and we need to adopt different ways of working, adopt greater use of technology.”
Changing the public service is not primarily about saving money but improving the system, he says.
“I have the luxury of being appointed without a sort of defined terms of reference. They didn’t say, ‘go and find me X amount of savings’. It actually was, ‘can you come and give your thoughts around how we could improve the operations’,” he says.
However, Sir Brian doesn’t believe the growth in size and cost of the public service since 2017 has delivered commensurate results.
“I have that view based on quite a lot of inquiry and observations, particularly from frontline staff, who I think, and this covers a lot of your members, are literally doing God's work everyday, and yet their jobs are getting potentially harder.”
The change that’s needed
He says there are too many layers of management in the public service and there needs to be a better balance between Wellington and the regions.
“We don’t deliver a lot of services to the public on The Terrace or Lambton Quay. We do that in Porirua, Napier, Hastings and New Plymouth. That’s where I think we need more attention, more focus, because that is where the people are.”
He also wants to see public servants empowered with the right tools, particularly AI, to work in an increasingly complex world where service expectations are higher.
“The use of AI across the public sector is pretty broad but it's a little ad hoc, and I think we just need to have a much more common set of standards. I'd like to see every public servant trained in the use of it and appropriately supported.”
Learning from others
New Zealand used to be at the forefront of public administration but has fallen behind others, he says, and could learn from other jurisdictions such as New South Wales, Ireland, the United Kingdon and Singapore.
“I don't believe there's a direct cut and paste. New Zealand has some unique characteristics and we should always be respectful of those.”
Singapore, which he recently visited, he says has less government agencies and a strong focus on inter-agency collaboration.
New Zealand in contrast has a lot of Government agencies (about 45), Crown entities and other types of organisations, and it’s an open question whether they all work in harmony, he says.
Listen to the public…some of the time
The public service can also learn from service businesses, which change in response to the markets and tastes of their customers, he says.
“I don't buy into the [idea the] private sector is completely different to the public sector. It has different objectives. But if you look at emerging organisational issues, whether you're in the public or the private sector, they are pretty common.”
He says having a focus on what citizens can legitimately expect from the public service is important.
However, there is a limit to his appetite for finding out the views of the citizenry. He didn’t believe there was a need to research the impact of the Government’s public sector funding cuts, which he doesn’t believe are having an impact on services.
“That's not my experience. No one has said to me that they're unable to do what they need to do.”
Becoming less risk adverse
Sir Brian is also keen to create an environment in which public servants can take more risks to tap into their potential to innovate. He acknowledges that the political, media and public scrutiny of the public service will make this difficult.
“We live in a world of high scrutiny…where everyone’s looking for fault. It’s debilitating but we just have to find a way through all of that, otherwise we’re not going to get the best out of people.”
After his two-year term ends, Sir Brian says he would like his legacy to be that he started a process that saw the public service adopt different ways of working and greater technology.
“I think if we could get a cohort of public servants who have a strong sense of commitment to the future and the courage to really embrace it, that would be a great outcome for New Zealand and for public servants.”
