3. Commerce Strategic Objectives
The Ministry's drivers and expectations clearly point to the need for outstanding performance.
To reach this, staff must be clear about the Ministry's aims and objectives and show a strong orientation to achievement.
Thus, Commerce's overall strategic objective is to achieve:
- clarity of purpose and success in performance.
Commerce is adopting the following strategies to achieve this:
Delivering Quality Policy Advice on Key Business Issues
The focus of policy advice is meeting the requirements of Key Result Areas; that is, removing barriers to business growth and innovation, lowering costs for business, improving regulatory regimes and promoting contestable frameworks for the delivery of certain Ministry services.
The capacity to provide quality advice is being intensively reviewed and upgraded by activities focussed on both staff policy skills and policy processes including research, consultation and evaluation.
The specific actions, set out in the supporting strategies below and in the KRA Ownership and its milestones, address the recruitment and retention of high performing staff and the formation of closer linkages between policy capability and remuneration.
Developing Operational Excellence
More than eighty percent of the Ministry's resources are applied to delivering a wide range of services to businesses and consumers. Achieving the Government's priorities calls for the highest levels of performance in the delivery of those services.
The strategy for operational competence is structured into all the supporting strategies and the KRA Ownership and its milestones.
Particular actions involve the further development of national and international benchmarking and best practice, and the uptake of relevant information technology.
Enhancing Future Capability
Commerce has demonstrated its ability to be adaptable, and will further strengthen this capability for responding to new requirements and to changes in its working environments.
The strategy for strengthening future capability rest firmly on the twin pillars of improving the management of both staff and of finance. A major effort to improve the quality of staff management across the organisation is underway, incorporating, as specified in the KRA Ownership, management competencies in performance agreements and revised human resources policies.
Achieving Key Results
The most explicit set of strategic objectives Commerce is committed to are the six Key Results Areas (KRAs), agreed to with Ministers and to be achieved over a three year horizon. Five of them directly contribute to one or more of the Government's Strategic Priorities. The other drives Commerce's response to the Government's ownership interest in building the organisation's intrinsic value. Each KRA has a set of contributing milestones to be completed in a financial year, the milestones for 1999/00 being set out in Annex 2.
The Six KRAs for 1999-2001 are as follows:
1. Remove barriers to business growth and innovation by enabling business to gain the best possible access to markets, expertise,capital (including foreign investment) and technology, and achieve better understanding of the critical factors for business success.
2. Lower costs for business and encourage efficiency, competition and innovation by:
- continuous improvement of business registration services;
- implementation of better standard setting and evaluation processes for regulation;
- review and reform of a range of business and consumer laws; and
- an improved framework for delivery of client services.
3. Develop and implement policies aimed at improving the regulatory regimes for the provision of telecommunications, electricity and gas and water and waste-water services.
4. Reduce compliance costs and promote contestability in the Ministry's delivery of its services, particularly in the areas of supply of government-funded training and development services for business;
- supply of registry and insolvency services; and
- mining and electromagnetic regimes.
5. (In partnership with Department of Labour, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Research, Science and Technology)
Progressively develop and implement policies that build an appropriate foundation of skills and knowledge across the working age population, in order to achieve business growth. This will include developing more effective second-chance, adult learning and community education programmes that support the transition from schooling to further education and/or to employment. It will also include working collaboratively with the "Enterprise and Innovation" agencies on policies to lift New Zealanders' skill and capability, New Zealand's intellectual knowledge base, and better focusing the direction of the Government's research and development investments.
Ownership Key Results
6. Commerce will improve its future capability in its core areas of policy advice and service delivery. Specifically, the Ministry will achieve:
- improved quality of management across the organisation;
- enhanced policy skills and policy processes;
- strengthened operational competence; and
- improved responsiveness to the needs of Maori clients.
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