Judith Collins wants core public servants to "set the highest standards", champion innovation and new ideas, embrace AI, and treat public money as their own. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
New Public Service Minister Judith Collins is calling for a culture of saying 'yes', but being honest enough with ministers to "reconcile the vision with reality".
She wants core public servants to "set the highest standards", champion innovation and new ideas, embrace AI, and treat public money as their own.
Despite "full confidence" in sector leaders, she is setting high expectations - saying "performance is non-negotiable" and last year's cuts needed to be done.
Changes to the Public Service Act are also likely, with Collins calling for ideas on what could help public servants do their job better.
Having taken over the Public Service Minister role in late January, Collins laid it all out in a speech to public sector leaders at the Beehive Theatrette on Tuesday.
She recalled Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's words, that "a culture of saying 'no' is not acceptable, your challenge is to inspire your staff, your team, to say 'yes'".
"Yes to the licence. Yes to the permit. Yes to considering trailing AI tutors for kids. Yes to delivering a government app that provides the sort of service that the commercial world delivers. And yes to treating our customers like customers."
Her speech echoed the sentiments of her predecessor Nicola Willis, who last year also called for the sector to bring bold new ideas, having overseen the axing of thousands of jobs which she promised would continue long into the coalition's term.
Willis had pushed a crackdown on pay increases and working from home.
A survey in December showed nine in 10 public servants had been affected by restructuring in the past year, more than half were concerned about job losses, and more than 40 percent regularly worked unpaid extra hours.
Collins said it was never easy telling someone the programme they'd worked on for years, or their job, would no longer exist - but "it's not something the government has done lightly ... it is something that absolutely needed to be done", pointing to the sector's 34 percent growth and 72 percent salary cost increase under Labour.
"My point is this: the more complex and challenging it gets, the more simple we need to keep it."
Setting the highest standards meant "doing the basics well and sticking to core business," she said, as well as being competent and politically neutral, providing free and frank advice, remaining corruption-free and efficient with taxpayers' money, and "above all, delivering results".
She pointed to sharemilkers, aged-care workers, and bus, taxi and truck drivers, saying they were "inherently practical people who want to know that you are helping make their country wealthier, and safer.
"They don't want flow charts, frameworks, roadmaps, or bubble diagrams ... building trust and confidence, as you know, is a slow and laborious task over many years. But it can be destroyed with one seemingly innocuous act."
She offered advice on offering free and frank advice - urging a balanced approach.
"The best public servants know how to use analysis to persuade. They know how to reconcile the vision with realism and they know how to square the hole," she said.
"Public servants who speak truth to power by telling ministers their pet policy ideas are crazy and unworkable don't get far. But neither do public servants who nod along and promise to deliver the undeliverable. That is a betrayal of the responsibilities of a public servant.
"Tell us how we can implement our priorities and policies. Tell us how we can improve our policies. Tell us how we can improve outcomes for individuals, families and communities. Tell us when intervention is necessary ... and remember that ministers, just like senior public servants, have a way of coming back!"
Innovation, but not too much
She called for innovation, which "isn't just a nice-to-have, it's a must", saying the sector should "be bold and take a few risks".
"Freedom to fail, hopefully in a small way, can give us freedom to succeed."
However, they shouldn't take too many risks, with Collins saying new ideas were conditional on leading "to better outcomes for the public - that's tangible results".
This also needed to be paired with a plain-language approach to public communication.
"You and your staff need to think about your customers. When you are talking to or writing to your customers, think how it sounds to them.
"Is it gobbledygook? Is it a word salad? Is it arrogant and lacking in empathy? Is it inherently distancing you from the people who are paying your salary? My suggestion is to leave the acronyms at the door. Keep your superior language skills for those who will appreciate them."
She offered some help - signalling changes to the Public Service Act which she said was "too prescriptive, preventing innovation in the sector", and calling for ideas on how to change it.
Collins, who lost the Science and Technology portfolio last month but held on to Digitising Government - said she wanted to see the public service "embrace the potential of AI".
"I look forward to seeing a centralised, AI-powered data platform that enables real-time sharing of insights and collaboration between agencies like health, education and housing. It will be able to identify connections that may not be immediately obvious."
She also talked up the potential for "digital procurement".
"Other countries are looking to how they can use procurement as a way to deliver better and more cost effective results by emphasising their own industrial or technology base."
Of course, all of this would be done with the utmost care for public funding.
"Taxpayers trust us to use their resources wisely, and we cannot, in the fog of daily pressures and challenges, lose sight of that," Collins said.
"Here's a simple question I would urge you and your staff to ask themselves: if this was my money, would I spend it this way? This is the simple question that I ask myself when I am making funding decisions. It's what I need you to do and to enforce."
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