—of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, on the tracks in the earth— the first item on our agenda today is in virtual evidence session with Diane O'Henge, programme director of the policy project, department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in a new year's land newspaper, to inform our inquiry into effective Scottish Government decision making so good evening Ms Heungar and welcome to the meeting. I understand you all providers with a short presentation on the Michelin approach. O.g. Godefawr, mae hi i yw'r unig i daytimeur. A fyddwn i'n ffacir, mae'n fawr fel Ffawrion hyn. Rhaid nhw wedi bod maen nhw'n reall a wnaeth y cyflwyn i ddweud. Rwy'n dda at y chyfodd gweithio eu hwn, rwy'n cael ei halu'r ymwilio arwt. Mi fydd eisiau gweld ardd�ibohol ac i chi ddif familiaeth, γom fpswyddoedd eich prChar матrooalg, a heddiw'r�ideil yn evu y cael rada Talker, lle'r skezenderfyn Aberraith i'n demorog, Gwyrdurod – I've got the only way I can see what I'm presenting to you is to have it covering much of the screen at this stage. But look, I'm just to pick off. I'm realising that we need to leave time for questions. So I will move on from the policy capability framework. I know you've got copies in front of you. We were talking about the different things that we did and we got us through number 4. Number 5, selfie of an impromote awareness and use of the proxy project framework and guidelines. We take every opportunity we can with social media, whether it's at events and newsletters, etc. We aim to do this because we think that if most people were using these we think that we could make some ground, but we still have got a ways to go to ac меся to achieve that. Finally, we have monitored our performance, and I think I was mentioning we have recently had an independent evaluation. I will just give two more slides quick before I start to question time. Two things were, you will see on the second to last page, we refer to a range of other online resources for building policies skills knowledge. We have spent a bit of time building some resources that people can use. A chŷwys ythdynt erbyn yn llawer yn ddunio. Rydw i'r ddych chi'n ddyluniaeth ar y cyfrindig hyffordd i ddweud sydd eitem ni'n gatid hefyd. Mae'r prydau'r dim yn goold na'r cyfrindig ynglynig ieithio yr aeimau. Felly, y cyfrindig hwn yn ddod a'r cyfrindig hwn yn ddefnyddio ddod i ddechrau The Law. Finally, I will come to the question of long-term insights briefing. This is a point in which we have developed policy system change, or Government system change. I think that the Governmentís concerned that the public serviceóand responding to ministers often, we are very focused on the short term policy change. We were asked when the Public Service Act was being prior for about 25 years whether we felt that oeddamuswyr y gallai ei amgil yn gwneud cael feedback cyd-re charge i gael risidaeth ei gael gig coming They can do that either agency or they can club together if they think there is a topic of common interest that's important. What's interesting about this instrument, is that it's independent of ministers, it's actually the public service doing, producing a think piece out there in the public domain tabled in parliament, discussed at a select committee about the following thing and it's ychwanegu hwnnw, y mae rhai prifonwadau aysodd o unid i'r prifonwadau aysodd o ailfyneddau o ffraithu hinerio. Bydd hynny'n hoffi'r sloedd o bwysig iawn a llersodd o ranfermwadau o holl o ranfermwadau sydd o gwaith o'r ei wneud a'i hwnnw i'r sloedd, oherwydd mae gydag mwy hwnnw i'r sloedd ffrenedd a llersodd o gwaith, i'n hoffi'r sloedd o'r anhygoel sydd o hwnnw. y gallai gynwl oedd y mynd i gael, mae'n mynd i'r ystil iawn o'u cefnodau, r theory oedd y mynd i gofyn gwybod hwn o'n hynny, neu mae'r ystil iawn o'i cefnodau, a mae'r ystil iawn o'u cefnodau ar gyfer y proson cynghau neu ddweithio â ddonol o'r dweithio a'r ddweithio, mae yna yn meddwl i'n mynd i sicrhau i dyddol i ddyf bikech pob hwn i gael. Gallai ddymeidio i ddweithio hefyd neu ddyddo i hefyd Soon it might be after a further reelection or even two that the real decisions might get made. On the right hand top side of that slide I have just showed the steps that are involved, and you'll see that the other thing that's interesting about them is that the public does get to come in at every during the process. It's actually at three stages early on, when people have done some initial analysis and they say we think this is the key topic in the healthy area or in the transport area, That's the topic and this is why the public gets to give feedback on that. Then the briefing is developed, there's public consultation on the draft briefing and, as it is given to the minister, it's solely a posting box to go to Parliament and then obviously a select committee stage a possibility for public engagement. To give you a sense of where this is at, the first action of ah kol briefing was 2021-23. The 28 Government departments are producing 19 topics. A few people are working together. Quite varying approaches, some are professionally done futures thinking. Others are less grogn in that area. There are very different approaches to engaging with citizens as well. Seven of them are still yet to be tabled in Parliament and when those have got there we will then i'r reifu yw yma y Girls First Round. Felly those can update the guidance and they can get into the next round. For me that has been something more exciting than a wave, for me. I know that since 2001 the public service has done more future-focused work in thinking than it had done in the previous probably 15 or 20 years. It's quite exciting to see that. We are still early days to think about how it will improve things for New Zealanders. It's a long-term process. I will leave it there. I am very happy to answer any questions that you have about any aspect of what I've covered. Okay, thank you. I don't know if colleagues got everything that you said, but I think we'll certainly ask questions in probe and thank you very much for the opening introduction. I'll kick off before I invite colleagues around the table to come in with some questions. I think the first question I would really like to ask is to go back to the start of the process regarding the public service act 2020. Obviously that followed on from my previous act 32 years previously, but I'm just wondering why it was felt that legislation was actually needed in order to try and change the cultures and behaviours that obviously you had in New Zealand. There was a whole wider. The long term and science briefing was a very small piece of this. I think the more, if I just try and channel our public service commissioner as he now is, and what he would say about why we had to change the act, he would focus on the fact that the world is moving in ways that require less silos, you know, less separate individual agencies operating separately and needed more mechanisms to be able to flexibly work across the usual departmental boundaries, and so the act does provide more of those. There's been a strong view as well, I mentioned the issue with the treaty and with, you know, our indigenous people. There was also a feeling that actually there wasn't enough, well there was virtually no reference to that in the previous legislation. Yes, so there were lots of little areas that needed attention. Much of what was covered though came forward from the previous act, so we still have strong degree of independence of individual government, the chief executives. You know, we do not have a strongly centrally led public service. It's a lot of the power in our act gives the power to the individual heads of government agencies rather than the public service commission, and that was essentially rolled forward. Okay, thank you very much. Now you touched on your presentation in terms of the long-term insects briefing which you mentioned is at least once every three years, and one of the key points of that is that the public can contribute to future decision making, helping them to collectively, as a country, think about and plan for the future. Now realise that the act has only passed in 2020 with the pandemic, but I'm just wondering if there is any evidence or signs that that has actually transpired or is starting to happen? It's probably a decade that would almost be required, I think, to see the whole thing roll through, because it takes almost three years to produce one, and the issues you're talking about are not intended to be decided on by, or at least largely not, by the current government, but the next government. So if we were to sort of trace one set of issues, so what I can see now is that there has been somewhat more engagement and focus on some longer-term issues, but we're not at the point where there are decisions, and you could sort of say, you can't draw the line yet between what was in an individual report and what anybody's yet done. That's not a failure, it's just that it takes time to work through those processes. Okay, thanks very much. I notice that there's a head of the policy profession who's responsible for improving the policy system capabilities, processes, standards, in helping to improve the outcomes that you contribute to, including higher quality policy advice, better government decisions and better outcomes for people in New Zealand. So the report we have goes on to talk about how a sample of policy advice papers is assessed by a panel, so I just wonder if you've got an example of how that has worked in practical terms, and also how do you ensure objectivity in that process, as opposed to subjectivity? So I guess we're using what we're trying to do is we're trying to ensure, well, everybody is required to use the same measuring stick, which is the policy quality framework, and we have guidance for panels that tells, you know, there's a common approach to selecting the sample, it's a random selection process, you can't go through and say, here's all the best papers. You assess asking how well is each paper done on context, analysis, advice, action, we've got advice on some of the trickier issues, tricky issues like, well, what if this one had to be written overnight? You know, should we say it's not a very fantastic paper, but given you only had 24 hours to do it, so we say no, no, we should look at the, we shouldn't look at those requirements, we should, you should look at just what, you know, how it does on these facets. There is, of course, there is some scope for disagreement, we've actually got some work under way at the moment, we were testing that, so we've actually drawn a couple of papers, one have scored a three, one scored a four from every agency, and then we've had one group, small group, one small panel of experienced people who are on other panels, to independently score them and compare, and what we found was, yes, there was a bit of variability, but actually not not significantly amounts of variability. So, I mean, in some ways, it's not the absolute score that's the most important thing about it, the important thing is that the agencies are saying, what did I did, and there's a report that comes alongside the score, and it says, you know, yes, this is a trend in your scores, but also what are the things you are doing best at, and what are the areas that most need development, and it's that continuous improvement of feedback of that information, that is actually, I think, more important than the score, but the score is still useful, it's useful to know that you used to be an agency that mostly scored fours, and now, for some reason, you're scoring two and a half, that's useful information, but what you would do about it, you need to have the information about the areas that you're doing well in, and more importantly, the areas you're not doing well in, and then you need to plan to address them, and it's enabling people to focus in and take this seriously, and I've noticed, I've been in this role six years, there's a lot more talk about, and there's a lot more, yeah, there is more focus on it, and people are talking the same kind of action, and people are sort of saying, well, they've got, they do really well all the time, what is it they do better at, you know, and so it gives you some of those, some signals and some information to do better, to help you do better. Yeah, so this process effectively helps best practice being inculcated across the, you know, the entire government, yeah. I mean, I noticed that, I noticed in terms of the interim evaluation commissioned in late 2020, a number of points touched on, and one of them was talked about the fast-paced change of policy work and the difficulties of changing entrenched behaviours. What kind of entrenched behaviours are there that need to be changed in New Zealand? Okay, well, I think I referred to engagement before with people. I think one of the entrenched behaviours is policy people in New Zealand, and I don't think they're much different in most other countries, think that they should do a lot of thinking and work independently of the population affected by an issue before they go and talk to them, you know, but of a tendency to think that they should become an expert working inside the system. And so one of the things, you know, that we would advise people to do is go out and talk early. How do people affected by the problem see it? You know, what do they think is causing it? Policy people are very different. They're not necessarily sensitive to the whole population and sometimes cannot just, cannot see things as they're affecting citizens out there easily. Citizens who might be much less educated and much poorer and not living in cities, you know, for example. Yeah, so I think that's one of the things that I think has been, you know, moving on that is something that needs, and it is slowly happening. And sometimes it's not done either just, it's not just official, so sometimes I'm not so keen on that. Sometimes it's their political masters, which is another issue. Okay, thanks. And I notice, I mean, this resonates because I think we've some of the same issues here in Scotland. It says, capacity issues and speed of decision making makes prioritisation and following those processes is challenging and also favours decision making focused on firefighting rather than addressing longer-term challenges and squeezes the time for data analysis and identification of data gaps at the start of policy development. So how is the kind of new process that you have in New Zealand being able to overcome this kind of long-term difficulty that I think so many administrations face? I think it's a really tricky one, isn't it? Because citizens expect action from government and therefore government expect quick turnaround of advice from officials so that they can deliver to citizens. So it is kind of tricky. I guess what that's why we're trying to at least engender a culture of, you know, a paper without evidence is really not a good paper at all. And we, you know, it's something we can't do centrally because actually the information you need is very topic and agency specific or sector specific, you know. You know, what good data sets might be and what good evidence sources might be and engagement approaches might be for the health sector could be very different from, say, conservation of natural resources or whatever. So again, as I said, we'd be trying to, you know, I think there is. I think your average policy person is trained in ways that mean they have a high respect for evidence but they just don't necessarily have time to do it or they're not necessarily, their agencies could sometimes do better at making sure it's easy to get to evidence quickly, you know, when you need it. So it's not just about the individuals changing, it's about the systems changing. And those things are resource intensive if you're going to do them well, so sometimes there's a financial constraint. Okay, thank you very much for that. And I'm only going to ask one more question then. I'm going to open out the session to colleagues around the table. On Sunday, a book called How Westminster Works and Why It Doesn't by a man called Ian Dunne was reviewed in the Sunday Times. What was interesting was it talked about a technique that they have in the civil service at Westminster called boxing in. And that's a situation whereby civil servants allegedly give ministers four or five different options, all of one of which are completely bonkers, and one is sensible in order to try and channel the minister into taking one decision. The article did point out that Liz Truss kind of broke that by always going for one of the mad options, but when she was Prime Minister and Minister, but generally speaking, it's a serious point because it means that ministers are corralled into a certain direction. So I'm just wondering if that's an issue that actually happens in New Zealand, does that take place? Is that something you have experienced of? I have not, but I will get the book. Sounds intriguing. I haven't had a single conversation of that as a way of managing the process. It's counter to the advice that the policy project would provide. I'm strongly counter. I'm pleased to hear that, so thank you very much. First colleague to ask questions round table will be Deputy convener Daniel Johnson to be followed by Michelle. Thank you very much. I think one of the very typical reactions you get when you're trying to implement a consistent methodology across an organisation is for people to go, well that all makes an awful lot of sense, but our area is special and we don't need to follow it. The other thing that I think you see quite a lot in the public sector is that the way that a lot of public bodies will get around that is that they just carry on doing what they're doing, but they'll present their findings or their thoughts publicly in line with the methodology, but actually behind the scenes carry on doing what they were doing. I'm just wondering to what extent those things have been apparent and how much actually this has driven fundamental change in practice or how much of it is simply about presentation of existing practice and I think overall how much resistance has there been to this approach? I think I was lucky that the idea of having a score of your policy advice was brought about two or three years before I came on the scene. What I succeeded in doing was getting them to use the same measuring stick, so at that stage they said you've got to measure it but it's up to you to decide what framework you use. Yes, it's true that when you share the results with agencies showing where they all are on it, then all the ones at the lower end will certainly want to talk about the special circumstances they face. That's fair enough. If I was on the issues I probably would too, but none the less they've got a sense that I'd like to be higher up that picture. We don't make a big deal of the league table type approach, but we do do it. It's for their discussion and purposes. In terms of the do they do, no, I don't think they are. I think their resources are too small to be able to run a separate evaluation approach and because there's a random sampling of any of their papers, it's kind of like well any of them could be. We've kind of got some of the incentives I think right to do it. For some of them it is right, it is compliance, but I see an increasing proportion who say oh actually there is some benefit we get out of it and that links back to that comment I made to your colleague earlier that it's about that continuous improvement stuff, so it's not the score so much as the additional information that you get. I think people are, now when we did the measuring stick as well, the other reason people have brought in I think is that we sort of said we'll have this common measuring stick, but we will collectively create a measuring stick that we all think is best in class. Everybody who had a measuring stick, they got to bring this along and explain why their system was good and from that we created one which was signed off then by the whole system as being our system. It's been a bit more collaborative than some of those sorts of compliance-based systems. Thank you very much for that. Moving on thematically, we embarked on this inquiry in terms of Government decision making in a very broad sense and I think that was as much actually thinking about how the Government makes decisions about managing the day-to-day as circumstances change as opposed to policy making which is about what you want to do in the future, but actually what's interesting is you speak to both politicians and officials and they naturally only talk about policy and it's only actually when prompted or prodded that they talk about delivery and I just wondered whether or not there are comparable approaches to looking at actually how you once the policy is set is actually how that is then implemented and also then managed in the steady state because those things are often as important if not actually more important than that upfront initial analysis and policy which is about what you want to do in the future. I agree that you want to have good decisions made and then you want them implemented well or otherwise you're not going to get the the end benefits you're talking about. We don't have I mean I think it's because in a way it's more multi you know that the realities of implementation can be so different in different sectors that you know who's doing the implementing you know like there's some things that are being implemented by government agencies and their delivery arms out there but there are others that are being implemented by local government or sometimes even by sector organisation you know I mean this is kind of a self-regulation process maybe going on or things like that amongst businesses so it's harder to have a common measuring stick I think out there. The approach we've taken is for that area the government has taken is to say actually there is some you know things have fallen over sometimes in the past they've not you know worked out nearly as well as we thought and so we now have an implementation unit in the department of prime minister and cabinet so some of my colleagues their job is to select some what is seen as really key projects and to really keep the focus on implementation. The other approach that's being taken is to try and foster more post it's more evaluation after after implementation you know so that we actually know what were the outcomes if they didn't work out as expected at the policy stage why not you know what could be done about it again that continuous improvement model. It's still an area where I don't think we do well and I'm not I've yet to meet a government that you know to hear of a government that really does do very well in that area. Politicians tend to want to get their decisions made and then they may not be around when implementations happened and if it hasn't gone well they're not necessarily so keen to have it all out there and see so I mean I think there's a few things that explain why that's not a strength in many in any country that I've come across. That's interesting. The final thing I wanted to ask is I think one of the things that probably strikes most of us as interesting is that is the move by the cabinet in New Zealand to publish all of their cabinet papers both for cabinet and subcommittees of cabinet in public within 30 days and that is quite striking contrast to how things are done both in Scotland and in Westminster where you know there are 30 year rules these things don't emerge until decades after these things have been discussed. To what extent has that made a difference or I mean the other thing that we have seen is that when these transparency measures are brought in is that essentially both the administration and ministers do everything they can to avoid the channels that these things might be recorded to this is the rise of government by WhatsApp so has it improved things or has it pushed things into the shadows? I'm really not in a good position to know because we focus on the policy process and policy capability but we don't focus on policy content you know our job in the policy project is not to give advice on health policy or whatever so I don't actually get to see the discussions and therefore I don't know the difference between the discussions and what gets published it may it may but really we had a very you know we transitioned from an official secret act to a to really quite a strong official information act a long time ago now so they're really this is just the last step you know on what was all really pretty easy to get the only stuff you could withhold was stuff that was still subject to free and frank advice in the sense that you know there was still a decision making process underway and as soon as that was finished in principle if someone asked for it you had to give it anyway now it is instead waiting for someone to ask that goes up there on a website you know so it's not a big difference for us it's another it's another step but it's yeah so I haven't noticed a lot of talk about it amongst officials here you know it didn't seem to them I don't think it's been such a big deal if there was a really big deal issue you'd probably be saying to the minister well there is a clause you can use to to not have to proactively release and you know we think you should apply that so there's still a backstop yeah thank you very much this very helpful and over at that point thank you very much Michelle to be followed by joining good evening thank you for joining us and what it must be very late in your day I'm thinking about the kind of similarities between Scotland and New Zealand and one of the things I often say about Scotland is the best thing about it is everybody knows everybody the worst thing about it is everybody knows everybody what we tend to find is that we bring in similar reps similar panels and we work very hard to try and get differentiation but sometimes it's hard because of the size of the pool I'm wondering if that is a similar issue for you in New Zealand and if so to what extent have you actively considered how it affects effective decision making and quality of delivery can I just ask a clarifying question so when you say you mentioned panels yeah I mean kind of pool yeah pool of people with whom we would consult for external evidence yeah okay no I mean I think that's an issue here too I mean we also a small you know a small country although quite a big land area quite spread out yeah there's those people who you're going to hear from whether you want to whether you want to or not they'll always be there to tell you what they think and then there's some you can find with a little bit of effort if you go back to them more than require them to come to you and then there's people who are really hard to reach I think and the only thing we have been able to do about that in the role I'm in is at least to develop some guidance that sort of says okay if you want to have inclusive engagement that doesn't just go to the same old candidates you know here's some techniques you can use you know and just sort of pull that together and also to sort of help people understand which government agencies can reach into those communities so for us this might be our Māori and Pacific Island communities but it might be our disabled communities and and so forth so we've got agencies who've got responsibilities and networks and skills in those areas and it's a matter of getting people to use them more I think. Thank you and following on from that I noticed in your policy methods toolbox which describes how to use behavioural insights can you tell us a bit more about that what sort of training to people go through and I'm particularly interested in how you actively avoid group think and the adverse influence of power structures where the inclination is always to acede to the person in the level above you in the hierarchy so how embedded are these behavioural insights and how well trained are the people using them and kept up to speed? Sure I mean I think in New Zealand I think we're probably less resourced and perhaps coming later to the party than perhaps some other countries I mean I know that in the UK you know back in the Blair Government times you know he had a behavioural insights unit inside his you know 10 Downing Street and so forth people were writing books about that and and so there's been this you know there was kind of more focus on it people with sort of a range of backgrounds from psychology and sometimes behavioural economics and so forth we've got a small subset of people who call themselves behavioural insights specialists or equivalent and I mean I guess the reason we've got stuff on it on our website is that almost everything government does is to do with behaviour change you know that's always what we're you know it comes down to what people what people do and we're trying to influence them in various ways and so it's probably good to put that lens on it and to get people thinking about well what is the behaviour but also how difficult is behavioural change I mean for a variety of reasons but which include power structures as you as you've pointed out so to try and get people kind of observant of it I mean just sort of asking what can we learn so it's using some of those less heavy hammers you know so we always have tended to think I think about behavioural change being something we do through you know laws and regulations you know you can do this you can't do that if you don't if you do do it this is what will happen to you or through financial you know we'll subsidise what we like or we'll we'll tax what we don't like you know that sort of stuff so there's a whole lot of stuff in that space where you just actually do subtle things to change the choice context that officials often haven't thought enough about you know so what we can do is so there's things about you know so our problem is people are not paying their fines well it turns out if you couch the the letter better that reminds them that your fines are due and you get it sent to them at a you know a better time and et cetera et cetera some of those things you can influence behaviour in subtle ways so what we've been trying to do is just at least to get people to to put that lens on more but it's actually it is hard stuff to change especially especially past rushes down and I suppose that just leads on to my last question about culture you know I mean I suppose culture is a kind of summing up of a whole bunch of behaviors when you were developing your your methodology in 2020 did you step back and actively look at the culture of how you deliver change and did you compare it to other countries and what sort of findings remain constant just you know a few days a few years down the track yeah um we we did we were interested in what other countries were doing um we were constrained by the fact that um at this particular period ministers were not saying we want a lot more fetures thinking we you know that wasn't their particular priority so we were constrained by things we could do within the ambit of the public service you know so some countries like wales you're you're not so far away um part of the world you know they've got their um uh is it commissioner on for the future generation or generations or equivalent and planning changes that planning is being required at every level of every level of government and in every sector and so forth to to to ask what would this mean for future generations um we didn't have a political appetite for that um so um so there was a necessity of actually saying to the minister this is something the public service could be doing you know um and and yeah so we're constrained by what we could get agreement to at that point in time and so this that was the initiative I mean again there's some interesting things in other parts of of um Europe that are very more you know involved Parliament more I mean I guess we have involved Parliament in the sense of the select committee process that's still playing out that's still a new new thing um I'm not sure I haven't been able to actually focus too much on I haven't been to any of the hearing sheet for example um um yeah so um it's it's really interesting that every country's done something quite different and I think that has to do with the sort of the context at that point in time um probably yeah okay thank you thank you very much um John to be followed by Ross thanks convener and thanks for taking part um I was intrigued in relation I think to the a the kind of long-term planning and thinking that a civil the public is it public servants we call them as compared to our civil servants are briefing producing briefings independently of ministers and I was interested in the relationship therefore between ministers and public servants because we see that as very close and civil servants or public servants wouldn't really speak say anything that wasn't in line with the minister so can you describe a little how that relationship is different in New Zealand um that's it's only this this bit that is different um so it was a departure for all the rest is just as you described you know so essentially it's ministers who talk to the media it's ministers who set political priorities officials help them achieve you know figure out the best way to achieve them um uh so yes so the decision was taken though that if this was it was it was trying to get it to be a bit bipartisan you know it was trying to sort of say okay here we're serving this government and future governments who may well be the ones who were actually going to have to make decisions about these things and so it was yeah it was it was decided to to um have that feature at this this and only this is done independently of ministers so ministers don't dictate which topic you choose they don't dictate um whether you work on it with other agencies or not they do not proofread they're given a copy to give to parliament they're not given a copy in draft and asked what they'd like you know if there's anything they'd like changed and so that was new territory um I guess we set the rule you know ministers were briefed soon after the act was passed so we did a briefing that sort of says here's what these things are here's what's different about them it is a different role than all the other things that come through um it was it was interesting I waited with baited breath to see what would happen when we actually got to the point where they were being given to ministers um to my knowledge there hasn't been any issues I think there's been a consistent messaging came down from the prime minister um that you know ministers shouldn't interfere with them um and they haven't I suspect one or two of them might have wanted to but um uh the message they were given by our head of department was you know was that if if that sort of pressure was starting to come on that they should notify him he would talk to the prime minister and that hopefully would resolve but to my knowledge that wasn't actually necessary okay thanks that's very helpful um I mean I think you said earlier that the civil servants wouldn't actually give advice so they would lay out different options is is that how it works and then it would be for the minister and or parliament to kind of choose exactly that's exactly and so that that also takes the heat off a bit you see yeah I get that now another point I mean I you were asked earlier about why the changes were made with the the new 2020 act and if I understood that correctly one of the reasons was there was too much silo working and that's something we have a big issue with as well um are there I realize it's early days but are there signs that there's less silo working and more kind of across Government it's some of the new mechanisms that the act enables and honestly I I haven't focused on strongly so I can't give you specifics certainly the numbers of them have been set up to work and a recent example is we've just we've had a very you know the biggest ever cyclone we've ever had which you know created havoc in about a third of the country and um they're using one of those vehicles for that as well you know so it's a mechanism by which it ties up with the financial appropriations as well so you can actually move some funding from say three agencies to this board that then can collectively do whatever they need to jointly do I have to suspend the session John sorry apologies Diana appeared to be cut off when you were on mid-flow there can you hear me can we hear you can you hear me yes we can hear you so sorry apologies yeah we were cut off I think when you were responding to John incidentally we were hoping that the session initially would only go on until about 10 past 10 but three colleagues have yet to speak and we've lost over 20 minutes because of these interruptions so would it be possible to extend the session a wee bit or appreciate it yes it's fine I'm happy to do that that's great well thank you Diana I got those gridded words network connectivity issues yes yes okay well okay so don't have John if you want to remind us of what you were asking Diane there yeah well I was asking about the silos and whether that improved so I'm not sure if you'd finished answering that if you want to and just the final point I think I would ask sorry on you go I'll just say that I think I think we've got more mechanisms for jointly working effectively across silos and on priority issues you know things that really the focus is on it's going well but I think it's another of those areas of entrenched behaviours you know it's it's challenging to get people to change what they've been doing for some plans decades yeah okay okay I think we can identify with that here as well and the final point I was going to ask was when it comes to these long-term insights briefings and that kind of work how much priority do you think that gets amongst public servants or even amongst ministers you know is it kind of tucked in at the end of the day because they've got to do it or is it really a priority for them I think it varies from agency to agency and minister to minister you know there are some ministers who are absolutely insistent on every every ounce of resource going on their priorities and that's why we made them compulsory in the legislation because the chief executives will say look minister it says here in this act I've got to do some of this stuff every three years I don't think everybody's been having to point but in some cases it's been helpful yeah so there's that dimension to it I think public servants are generally you know I find policy people find this fascinating work you know so we it's not it's not hard to convince them that it'll be interesting to try and you know get better at this but it is I think you're right COVID was the was this all had to happen during all the COVID stuff and inevitably some of them are running late because resources did get channeled off to deal with with COVID but it was pretty hard to argue that that shouldn't be the priority you know I think it always will be an issue but again it's a it's the cultural change if in fact agencies themselves start to see some benefit they start to see that they're on the front foot more and it makes life easier later because you've done that research and investment we should see more willingness put more resource in that direction I'm an optimist okay thanks very much that's very helpful thank you very much Ross to be followed by Liz I've got a couple of questions for interest of time I'm just going to roll into one I'm interested in the point you made around the part of the role of what you compared to the the Welsh future generations commissioner approach is about you know fostering some bipartisanship to allow for that long term thinking given that you've got the ball rolling on this agenda under a centre right government but most of the time it's been bedding in it's been under a centre left government you could potentially have a change of government later this year how durable do you think this agenda is do you think this can survive a change of government has it become an established and agreed culture across the political spectrum in New Zealand or is it something that is ultimately dependent on the desire of a particular prime minister or cabinet and the second part of that question is when you're trying to break down silos and take a more holistic approach to government decision making how well do you think that works with multi-party government because I'm somewhat familiar with what you've got in that it's kind of a multi-party government but your two green ministers are in a bit of a silo from the Labour cabinet so does that breaking down a silo's work when it's crossing between the responsibilities of ministers from different parties where trust might be more of an issue than within the same party the questions um so um so dealing with the second question first actually because um oh well no no let's stick with the first one please um because it hasn't been deeply controversial yet the reports that you know there's nothing there's nothing yet to kind of become uh front page headlines on the paper because it which is because it's one of your colleagues pointed out earlier that we're not going as far as this is what you should do future governments we we're just saying you should you should definitely focus on this issue and here's a number of ways you could do it and you know here's some of the things you do the pros and cons um I think so long as it doesn't the minute one government one one opposition is frying one government as a result of this work it'll be at risk at the next election so far that hasn't been happening um it's it's pretty hard to argue against looking into the future particularly when we've had Covid and stuff and when most governments probably could have seen it something like this coming but most of us hadn't really drawn that much attention to it um so I it feels at the moment like um it's not necessarily going to be a political football the other thing is that the public service at you know the interesting question is why was it 32 years before it was last reviewed or it's is one of those kinds of things not the sort of thing you do every every every decade so I would think that if it doesn't draw a lot of political ire and because you know people like to be seen to be future think you know looking forward into the future etc every government's going to want to be seen that way my hunch is it will hang around for at least two or three goes and it will only be when that act is being reviewed I would predict for something else that people will ask a question well we should be changed that as well um and by then there may be a desire to do these things in a different way so there may be a desire to have a commission for the future or something else at that point you know so I don't think the solution we've got is necessarily perfect or the best one it was the one that was possible at a certain point um and if it evolves into something else from my perspective as the person who was involved in the advice at the beginning that's fine so long as we keep as a country asking what might be coming out of the horizon and how can we be prepared for it? Thanks on the second point there around multi-party government I'm thinking particularly of your climate minister is a green colleague of mine I'm aware that he's frustrated with trying to get cross portfolio work on climate because it requires it but he does sit in somewhat of a silo compared to colleagues who've got responsibility for agriculture or whatever it might be so how does this approach gel with a multi-party government um well I mean in a way because of the independence of ministers of any party it's it's it's not rubbled by those issues those issues are interesting because they they they have a lot to do with the size of the vote of each party so that's where things are now for the green party and the ministers to with them outside cabinet but you know the election before that they had quite a few more seats and they they have ministers in cabinet as well as outside cabinet and so it's not you know these things keep changing um I think hopefully you know this the people in the public service will see um you know the cases in this case by the way climate change was already very actively underway by the government through that you know because of James Shaw's um you know energy and commitment and that of his colleagues as well as prime minister who thought it was very important at that point who's no longer the prime minister um and so actually there isn't a long-term insights briefing on climate change because you know there is we've got a climate commission we've got a you know whole lots of policy changes and choices have been made and it wasn't felt that those were necessarily therefore you know there were other things that weren't being worked on which were picked up um yeah it's so it's um because i guess leading back the key thing probably is that because we're independent of the minister we don't have to worry about the coalition dynamics and even if even if the the main part of the coalition didn't want work to be done on something or you know was not planning to commission it themselves officials this process would allow officials to um to do some work on it i hope that's going to work in a way that um makes it easier to pick up things that parties who have a minority uh you know it probably increases the chances they'd be incorporated and then worked on not not rather than reducing it i hope but again as i said before i'm an optimist thanks very much okay thank you and finally Liz just one question for me if i may if there is a piece of legislation in the parliament that has not worked very well as in has got you know lots of problems about it could you just tell us how effective you think the post legislative scrutiny is within that parliament and whether you think your group would ever be involved in looking at why that policy commitment didn't work very well no we've been very very firmly told that we're not into policy content so that we wouldn't be us that that would come to um it might be i'm just trying to think about how that would work its way through i'm pleased to say that i can't immediately think of an example of where something has worked out really badly you know that the legislative scrutiny um um um which ideally would pick those things up um uh kind of hasn't i mean those things would normally make their way back through the responsible minister and the responsible agency or agencies so i mean um yeah so actually i an example is coming to mind um so things example might be something like um there were issues in the family court so there were there were there were big backlogs of cases in the family court and there was a review process and reform process but changed a whole number of dimensions of um what people could do both at the legal aid level and at the way the court's operated and a whole lot of levels okay and it was supposed to make it better um and probably in some areas it did but in a number of areas it actually made it harder for people um so what happened with that well once it was starting to be evident well of course the legal profession and others were lobbying and saying this and and parents groups and so forth were lobbying so the normal process is applied the minister then said a subsequent minister then said you know maybe this was not the best thing that my predecessor did and the whole set of work was set and trained in it but it went back through those processes which i yeah so we're not we're not a mega group whose job is to is to um be the judge and jury of whether something was good and the responsibility remains with the agencies and ministers our responsibility is to work with them to help them improve the way they delivered of you know and to build their capability and to build the quality of advice yes well thank you very much and that's concluded questions from colleagues just one more from myself to finish off and that's um there are a number of similar issues in Scotland and new zealand in terms of its parliamentary structure i mean obviously the population isn't too different but you've 120 members we've 129 you're a you've been a unicameral parliament since 1951 we're a unicameral parliament and you've select committees and we've committees and obviously your committees will interrogate policy and ministers as will ours so i'm just wondering how effective you feel that committee select committee structure is in doing that and finally if there's one change you could make to make this process more effective if you believe one change is necessary what would that be so i don't think the process is broken you know in the sense that it's you know i'd sort of say go back to the drawing boards i think what we see is legislation that does get changed after select committees have reviewed it and you know with varying degrees of bipartisan stuff happening in them so i think i think officials take select committees seriously and i think officials understand that most of the time their role is advising a minister but when a bill's in front of a select committee they understand that their role is to support the select committee and then that the select committee has a quality assurance role you know on the check on the on the on the executive government so i if that was a lot that's good about it i don't say i've thought a great deal about that that bit of the interface i've thought much more about the bit up to where where ministers and cabinet make decisions you know so if i had a magic wand and i could change behaviour i think it would be on that engagement side with with amenities and with affected people i think it would be i think it would be that culture change that makes you know some ministers understand that it's a really good idea to send their officials out there but others are very reticent about it and sometimes you're told not to literally told not to and i know that officials i mean i know of being there myself you know you suddenly you're in another part of the country with a community that's very different from the one you grew up in and they're angry with you because you're from the government and you're not doing it right you know and so if i could it would be that thing about sort of saying let's let's have a norm that says we've engaged more at the front end so people can engage quite well at the select committee end even even if not everybody you know comes to your hearings and so forth but i think having more of it at the front end would both end up with better policy advice and it would end up with more trust in government so that would be the bit i would and that's why i guess in this role i have been focusing some of our effort in those areas yeah okay well thank you very much for that i do want to thank you for spending a big chunk of your evening with us you know i'm going to realise it's about half past 10 at night over in new zealand and apologies for all the the difficulties that we had i'm not sure which end it was but it was it was great that you soldiered on throughout it also we do really appreciate it we as a committee will continue taking evidence on effective Scottish Government decision making at future meetings and i would certainly hope that we can engage in the future once more so that includes the public part of today's meeting next item on agenda which we'll discuss in private is consideration of our work programme so i'll just call a two-minute recess so thank you very much again dianne thank you enjoy the rest of you