Better Public Services Advisory Group Report - November 2011

But these sorts of benefits need to be achieved more widely. Other initiatives are just
getting started, such as the Government Legal Services initiative. This will generate
benefits through the collaboration of government lawyers and shared legal resources
across departments. The expected result is more robust risk identification, reduction and
management.
5.9 Trade-offs between what each agency might choose to do if left to its own devices and
what is best from a system perspective arise in ICT systems, default terms and conditions
for contracts (including audit requirements) reporting templates, etc. In the future,
functional leaders should have clear decision-rights over these sorts of issues; a clear
departure from the current situation.
5.10 Once functional leads are decided, they may be assigned to current or new chief
executives, depending on capability and capacity. Leaders should be supported with a
clear mandate and resources. The functional leader’s overall performance should be
assessed, in part, on their performance in this role.
Agency leadership
5.11 In the future, chief executives will increasingly have to work across government, as well
as leading their own agencies. They will face pressure to lead transformational business
processes within the tight fiscal environment. As well as continuing to deliver on their
more traditional vertical responsibilities, chief executives will need to reorient themselves
to horizontal considerations:
• Stronger functional leadership will cut across the independent decision-making
capability of agencies in areas like ICT and procurement.
• Stronger system leadership means chief executives will be expected to develop staff
to take on leadership roles outside the core department and to lose some
independence in where those staff are deployed.
Leadership from the centre
5.12 This report recommends a number of changes that will lead to stronger system-wide
leadership, across results and by function. For the most part, this stronger systemoriented
leadership will not need to be exercised by “the centre” (ie, by the State Services
Commission, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet or the Treasury). Rather
we anticipate that all chief executives and other senior staff will be challenged and
empowered to step up into stronger, system-wide leadership roles.
5.13 The centre will, however, have a critical part to play in identifying where system-oriented
leadership is needed, in initiating, expediting and sometimes imposing a system-wide
response and in ensuring rewards and sanctions reinforce system-oriented behaviours.
The three Central Agencies – the State Services Commission, the Treasury and the
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet – hold a range of leadership
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