Attachment 2: Information Sheet
Information for BIZ Providers
The Ministry of Economic Development has contracted a team of researchers to undertake an evaluation of the BIZ Programme. The team consists of researchers from the Bureau for Economic Research (BERL), the National Research Bureau (NRB) and the New Zealand Centre for Research into Small and Medium Sized Enterprises at Massey University.
Our brief is to assess how well the BIZ programme is meeting its objectives, and we are seeking to gain the perspective of a number of different groups on this question. These include clients of the BIZ programme as well as potential clients. We are also interested in the views of those involved in delivering BIZ.
The New Zealand Centre for SME Research at Massey University is leading the segment of the research that is concerned with gaining the views of the BIZ Providers, and three interviewers are involved: Claire Massey, David Tweed and Shirley Barnett. They will be visiting some 20 BIZ Providers and talking by telephone to another 12. One of the team of three will be interviewing you and seeking your views on the programme.
We are specifically seeking your organisation's opinion on
- The programme overall, including its impact on SMEs and any improvements that you would like to see made
- The performance of the BIZ Unit, including its management of the contract with your organisation
- Your own delivery. Here we are interested in the methods you use for monitoring and responding to market demands, how you target client needs, and whether the uptake of their services is as you expected.
We will need to meet with the person or people who can comment fully on these issues, and this can either be in individual meetings or in a group. We estimate that we will need around an hour and a half to fully cover the questions we have and to accurately summarise your comments.
The researchers will take notes of each discussion and their notes will be summarised into a report that will be provided to the Ministry at the end of July. In accordance with usual interview protocol, any individual comments that are used in the report will not be attributed to specific interviewees, and the Ministry will not have access to the researcher's records of the interview. However, the Ministry will be provided with a list of those organisations that have been visited.
If you have any questions about the content of the questions or the form of the interview please ring the Ministry of Economic Development or Massey University. All contact details are listed below.
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