Statement of Intent 1 July 2005 - 30 June 2008
Part 1: Strategic framework (continued)
Capability within the Ministry
The Ministry of Defence aims to have top-quality people, relationships, and processes that will enable us to achieve our intermediate and high-level outcomes.
While we continue to have areas of strong capability, and areas where capability is improving, we also have areas that need further improvement, and will continue to test us.
People
The Ministry of Defence aims to attract and retain:
- high-quality policy analysts
- project managers who can manage military equipment procurement
- evaluation analysts who can assess and audit defence activities and functions.
In a Ministry of only 64 staff, we must ensure we have the right people in the right job at the right time.
We want to play our part in upholding and reinforcing the ethical standards that will ensure the New Zealand public service deserves and holds the respect of its citizens.
Policy analysts
We continue to attract highly qualified graduates with a real interest in defence.
We ensure that we have the right human resources policies to recruit, develop, train, and retain high-quality policy analysts. We want to develop further the depth of knowledge of defence issues held by our analysts and expand their breadth of knowledge about Government processes and practices. To help achieve this, we maintain a comprehensive training programme as well as an active secondment policy. Mutual secondments of policy analysts with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade are extremely beneficial in enabling our staff to gain a broader understanding of how New Zealand's security and prosperity interests are advanced and protected abroad.
Acquisition project managers
We require people with expertise in the acquisition of military capability. This is a highly specialised area. The Ministry of Defence needs people who operate to public service standards in a highly competitive commercial environment. Project managers may be required to live overseas for extended periods to supervise an acquisition project. The Ministry is too small and specialised to train and retain people in the full range of skills required. The Ministry of Defence must therefore recruit people who have already developed the necessary skills and experience. A project manager may lead a team of up to 10 people (usually seconded from the New Zealand Defence Force) and manage a number of external providers of services, for example: consultants who provide independent verification and validation of specifications; lawyers for the project; risk management consultants and specialist auditors. We need project managers who can protect the Crown's interests through complex and multi-faceted projects.
Evaluation analysts
In our Evaluation team we seek to maintain a broad range of skills, disciplines and backgrounds. We undertake training with our Australian counterparts, in various audit and evaluation contexts, to ensure continuing professional development.
Relationships
The Ministry of Defence will continue to develop its reputation as the prime source of credible and impartial defence advice. As well as having the right people to provide that advice, we must make sure that our advice is accessible to others.
We must ensure that we promote good understanding of defence policy issues with other relevant public sector agencies, for example, the Treasury, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Office of the Auditor-General.
Processes
The Ministry of Defence maintains, and continually seeks to improve, rigorous processes for:
- acquiring military capability for the New Zealand Defence Force
- undertaking audits and assessments
- analysing and managing risks.
Analysing and managing risks and opportunities
We continue to review our operating environment, the risks we must manage and the opportunities available to us. In doing so, we have identified the strategic risks and opportunities that we face, within individual divisions and as an organisation. We monitor these regularly to ensure that the Government is fully advised with regard to risks and opportunities.
In the Acquisition Division, individual acquisition projects undergo comprehensive risk analysis, mitigation, and management. The Acquisition Division also maintains certification to ISO 9001 for quality management processes and outcomes.
Implementation of the Capability Management Framework has provided an opportunity to establish mechanisms for identifying risks to capability projects at an earlier stage in the life cycle.
Continual improvement
Our capability to persuade and influence, to ensure that we are credible and respected, must continue to improve. We will assess whether our capability development is delivering the outcome we need. This will be measured by periodic internal review, drawing on the stakeholder feedback we receive on our effectiveness.
How Corporate Division helps employees
The Ministry's Corporate Division supports policies and practises to ensure staff receive appropriate professional development opportunities. Staff are encouraged to establish development plans and adopt a shared responsibility for their professional development. Managers are required to ensure that all staff can make known their training or professional development needs, and staff training requirements are reviewed regularly throughout the Ministry. Managers are encouraged to participate in Leadership Development Centre activities as appropriate.
All new staff attend an induction programme in the first few weeks of their job to ensure new employees are equipped to be productive and enjoy their work. This programme covers all aspects of the Ministry's work, and includes introductions to the New Zealand Defence Force, and to the workings of the Minister of Defence's office. All new staff receive specific briefings on the Ministry's policies, especially security policies and procedures. The induction programme reflects the importance placed on the cohesive function of the Corporate Division within the Ministry. The induction programme covers:
- introduction to all aspects of the Ministry's core business
- training on the Ministry's electronic document management system, with particular emphasis on the collective responsibility to care for the information created and retained by the Ministry
- introduction to the Ministry's performance management system
- health and safety/EEO policies and practices.
Further training sessions are provided, as appropriate, on the machinery of Government, writing for your audience, project management and on legislation like the Defence Act and the Official Information Act. Specific roles have courses geared towards them, for example, policy analysis, which are later followed by other courses.
Ergonomic audits and adjustments as necessary are undertaken on the workstations provided for all Ministry staff.
Evaluating Defence: Identifying areas for improvement
From the management of officer careers to the organising of deployments to the Middle East, the range of subjects assessed and audited by the Ministry's Evaluation Division is wide and varied.
The Division is all about improving how Defence works. Recent work that has identified areas for management attention includes:
- Looking at how the Ministry and the New Zealand Defence Force managed the capability development and source selection aspects of Project Protector. This project is acquiring seven new ships for the Navy, primarily to carry out patrol and surveillance tasks for a range of government agencies. The audit looked at how well the Ministry and the New Zealand Defence Force had engaged with those agencies when establishing the functional requirements for the ships. It also looked at how the defence agencies kept other agencies informed as the project advanced. It made a number of recommendations for improvement in information exchange. These recommendations will be taken up in other, similar, projects.
- Reviewing the New Zealand Defence Force's policies and practices for managing the careers of its officers. The audit found that there was scope for the New Zealand Defence Force to improve a number of its career management practices and to make its actions more transparent.
- Examining the way the Army contracted out its Camp support activities at Waiouru, and how well it is managing the contract. The audit found that after some early difficulties, the Army and the contractor have made solid progress in establishing a sound, co-operative working arrangement. The implementation of a commercial contract for Camp services has enabled the Army to reassign scarce military personnel to fill gaps in operational units.
- Reviewing the planning and implementation of naval and air deployments to Operation Enduring Freedom in the Middle East. The reviews found that these deployments presented few significant issues for the Navy and Air Force and were largely achieved through normal operating management. The speed with which ships and aircraft were prepared and deployed demonstrated that they were at an appropriate level of readiness and able to generate the required level of operational capability within the time available.
