4. Integrated Support Strategies
To succeed in its strategic objectives Commerce must create an environment that supports its people. Commerce's overall strategy is underpinned by a series of initiatives designed to create this supportive environment.
Building Human Resources
To fulfil this plan, Commerce requires people who are highly motivated, professional and disciplined, appropriately qualified and multi-skilled, ethical and imbued with the spirit of the Public service.
Commerce's people will be analytical and action-oriented as well as reflective, flexible and responsive. Commerce's managers will be strong in the people management skills that enable top performance and create a culture where people are able to feel a strong commitment to the values and purposes of the Ministry.
To attract and retain skilled employees, Commerce must have values and policies promoting:
- fairness, and rewarding high performance - clearly defining, recognising and rewarding high performance, and managing poor performance;
- investment in the future - providing staff development opportunities where they will lead to improved performance;
- merit - choosing the best person every time; and
- equality - treating people in similar circumstances in the same way.
Commerce's specific human resource initiatives are designed to improve its staff capability for both policy advice and service delivery. They focus on:
- improved management - utilising the management competencies and performance agreements process, and developing a management capability plan;
- enhanced policy skills - developing improved linkages between remuneration policy and the recruitment and retention of high performance policy staff; and
- strengthened operational competence - through bench-marking, extending on-line services and accreditations.
Harnessing Information and Information Technology
Information management and information technology have a crucial role to play in developing Commerce's knowledge base for providing policy advice to Government and strengthening operational performance.
Commerce's strategies for managing information are:
- building and managing networks for improving and exchanging knowledge and information, and communities of shared practices, to support policy advice and operational excellence;
- developing a framework for enhancing and utilising Commerce's information and knowledge;
- making Commerce's information accessible to all, thereby facilitating a fair and informed workplace and community;
- managing risks associated with information, including providing for confidential material and for business continuity in crisis situations;
- aligning initiatives for managing Commerce's knowledge with the human resources strategy; and
- developing information technology (IT) policies and using IT systems to provide effective and efficient support to the information strategies.
Information Technology
Commerce is reviewing the Information Systems Strategic Plan for IT to ensure alignment with the Ministry's Strategic Plan. The intention of the review is to ensure that IT makes a full contribution to the management of all information and to improving Commerce's strategic capability. The IT plan will also support operational excellence by providing an improved interface with business and other clients.
In reviewing the IT plan, Commerce will focus on:
- keeping a close alignment between IT and Commerce's strategic directions and objectives;
- confirming clear governance processes and standards for the use of IT across branches and business units;
- enabling access to and dissemination of knowledge across divisional, Ministry-wide, national and international boundaries; and
- demonstrating a high level of flexibility and innovation in problem solving and meeting client needs.
Enhancing Research and Evaluation
Commerce is responsible for delivering high quality policy advice to the Government in a number of areas where:
- the issues are highly complex, both in theory and in application;
- the preferred policy approaches can be contentious; and
- the economic implications are significant.
It is essential, therefore, that this policy advice is informed by sound research and evaluation practices and processes to ensure that:
- analysis reflects a thorough and up-to-date understanding of the relevant factual and theoretical matters, which themselves can be subject to rapid change;
- the advice identifies the assumptions and arguments that lead to preferred policy approaches; and
- the quality of the advice is commensurate with the strategic or economic significance of the issues on which advice is tendered.
Commerce's initiatives for enhancing its research and evaluation processes focus on:
- recruiting and retaining staff with the right skill mix and strengthening skills through staff development (as set out in the human resources strategy);
- ensuring availability of resources for purchasing specialist expertise as is required from time to time;
- developing closer informal relationships with research organisations and specialists who are able to contribute to the policy debate;
- taking opportunities for jointly-funded research and evaluation with other organisations; and
- strengthening linkages and information flows with businesses and others likely to be affected by the policies.
Managing Finances and Relationships with Crown Entities
A key driver for Commerce is ongoing cost pressure. Requests for further services bring no certainty that increased funding will be available.
Commerce's initiatives to continue improving the quality of its financial management are:
- improved reporting - to provide more informative financial information for budget managers and senior managers to make informed decisions;
- improved alignment - to ensure that allocation of financial resources are allocated in alignment with the Government's strategic priorities;
- improved return on expenditure - to identify better quality and value for money;
- improved financial management knowledge - by training staff in the more effective use of financial information; and
- improved accountability - particularly to third party fee-payers.
The strategic objectives in this Plan will be used to drive all financial planning and reporting, and to allocate both operating and capital financial resources to priority areas.
Crown Entities and the Government
Commerce is responsible for overseeing a number of Crown entities, reflecting the close constitutional relationship between Crown entities and the Government. Commerce's initiatives for Crown entities focus on:
- minimising risks to the Government through improving knowledge of each entity's business and monitoring their performance closely against their contracts with their Ministers;
- enhancing accountability through formalising expectations and improved performance measures; and
- avoiding imposing unnecessary compliance costs or weakening the accountability of Crown entities through unnecessary interference.
Commerce also takes an active role in progressing generic Crown entity accountability issues.
Enhancing Risk Management
Public and Government expectations of improved state sector performance in managing risks, and the diversity of Commerce's activities and accountabilities covering six Votes, make it essential to develop a culture of professional risk management and embed this in management approaches across the Ministry.
Commerce has and will maintain robust policies to manage both external and internal risks. These policies focus on:
- maintaining a robust institutional framework, including a Risk Management Charter with authorities, a senior committee with oversight, and a Risk Management Unit, professionally staffed;
- sustaining an educational and information programme for staff on expectations, approaches and techniques for risk management;
- undertaking projects including risk profiles, business continuity plans, reviews of significant risks and communications activities which reinforce the risk management culture; and
- resourcing a strong focus in 1999/2000 on addressing Y2K risks to Commerce's activities.
It is central to Commerce's approach that risk management, unless the risk is Ministry-wide, lies with branches. A particular focus of the policy will therefore lie in developing branch risk management and self review capabilities, and branch business continuity plans.
Improving Asset and Property Management
Quality asset management is about sound decisions on the types of assets required, and on whether it is more efficient to replace or maintain existing assets.
Commerce's initiatives for improving its asset management are:
- regularly reviewing the type of assets used or required in relation to changing business needs;
- evaluating the most effective way to enhance capability when considering the purchase of assets; and
- maximising the return from all assets while minimising the associated operating costs.
Leased Property
Most of Commerce's properties are leased. At $8.0 million per annum, -accommodation costs for 37 properties comprise 10 percent of the Ministry's total costs.
The property management initiatives will focus on:
- permitting the most cost effective use of these resources, taking all opportunities to reduce accommodation costs, including utility and operating costs
- providing flexibility to meet the organisation's changing business needs
- providing a safe and healthy environment for all staff and clients
- achieving operational excellence in property management and meet all reporting requirements.
Building Treaty Capacity
The Government is seeking fair and affordable settlements to Treaty of Waitangi grievances and to improve the economic and social status of Māori.
Commerce has a major role in some of these goals as a key advisor on certain issues, including natural resources, Māori broadcasting, consumer affairs and indigenous intellectual property rights.
Commerce is building its capability to meet expectations on Treaty issues, particularly by enhancing staff responsiveness to the needs of Māori clients and improving its consultation processes. Initiatives focus on:
- establishing and implementing a strategy to lift overall staff knowledge and awareness of Treaty issues;
- updating its policy advice framework as it relates to Treaty issues and training policy staff in this; and
- completing and promulgating guidelines on the requirements of responsiveness, and implementing a communications strategy for specific services.
Strengthening Corporate Communications
The communications strategy has the principal aims of:
- demonstrating the Ministry's professionalism in delivering high quality services; and
- demonstrating Commerce's leadership in advising the Government on issues that impact on business and consumers.
The initiatives to be carried out in pursuit of the strategy will improve the quality of Commerce's long term relationships with business. They involve listening to, as well as informing, business. The initiatives include:
- strengthening the Commerce brand;
- articulating, through an out-reach programme, Commerce's role in innovative policy and service delivery;
- conveying the Ministry's globally-informed perspective; and
- utilising to the full the opportunities opened by information technology, including the Internet, to pass on our information to stakeholders and clients.
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