Too many meetings, not enough risk: Sir Brian Roche’s public service concern

Friday, 14 February 2025

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The public service is inefficient, operating with an outdated model, and scared of risk, new Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche says.

Roche, who has spent his first 12 weeks on the job looking under the hood of the public service, delivered his blunt assessment in a speech yesterday.

It comes the same week his new minister, Judith Collins, put the public sector on notice that it was there to serve its customers - the people of New Zealand.

Meanwhile, in a sign that the pain is far from over for public servants, The Post understands the Government has been asking them to find more savings.

Last year, Finance Minister Nicola Willis wrote to ministries asking for cuts between 6.5-7.5%. Following the 2024 savings drive by ministries, Willis in December confirmed there would be another targeted savings programme.

Thousands of public sector jobs have since disappeared.

This year, while letters have been sent, it is unclear which ministries have been asked for savings, the level of savings expected, and how the Government is expecting ministries to make those savings.

But Associate Finance Minister David Seymour said it was no surprise that the Government was “ looking down the barrel of a $17 billion deficit, and we have to find a way to get better value for money for Kiwis”.

The $17b was in reference to the Half Year Fiscal and Economic Update’s 2025 forecast deficit.

Roche used his speech to the New Zealand Economics Forum at Waikato University to run through what he saw as the challenges facing the sector.

He said there was too much management and not enough leadership. And he took issue with the “whole of Government’ approach beloved in public policy documents.

“That is good, but I would suggest it's at enormous cost in terms of time, in terms of dollars. It's generated a lot of internally focused work and multiple meetings, the value of which is questionable and often very frustrating for those who are trying to make change in these initiatives,” Sir Brian said.

“Whether we like it or not, the guise of collaboration has driven us towards a consensus based model, where we're essentially held to ransom [by the] slowest participant or the poorest performer, and that has to be addressed,” he said.

Roche, however, pointed out several times that these problems are not solely the preserve of the public service, but of the privater sector as well. He said that the distinction made between the two was sometimes blown out of proportion.

He also defended the sector against questions of waste saying that he did not think it was, “at any substantive scale”, but that the issue was about providing what the service could provide best.

“People work hard and they're doing the best, but the sector is under pressure, and it needs to continue to perform and deliver for New Zealanders every day,” he said.

And while he denied being an Elon Musk Doge [Department of Government Efficiency] equivalent in the New Zealand Public sector, he did, overall deliver a critique that many in the service will sit up and notice.

“There is a sense of consultation within the public sector becoming a mechanism to avoid decision making. The system is inherently inefficient.”

“The public service has become weighted down, in my view, by risk considerations and gets lost in processes that don't add value.”

As a result of the overweighting on risk. We have too many layers of management and meetings that can cycle and even kill action and progress.“

Roche asked what the service would look like if it concentrated on creating value as much as it did on risk.

Roche also outlined the current structure of the public service and in a signal of what could be a shake up to come, pointed to the fact there were so many chief executives - 46 - and that some agencies were simply too small to justify that.

“Our current model …- a [includes] a number of agencies that are sub scale and unable to capture the economic efficiencies of others, nor do they have the depth to provide resilience over time.”

“The question remains about what the optimal size of the Public Service entity is. If we address the inefficiencies, what will we be stripping out? This is the conversation I'm having with the chief executives,” he said

“We can't continually ask people to run faster. We actually need to change the way we do things.”