NEW ZEALAND STATE SECTOR

TOTARA LMS TRANSFORMS THE
NEW ZEALAND STATE SECTOR

Widespread public
sector adoption of
open source learning
management delivers
powerful benefits.
The New Zealand state sector is undergoing
its biggest transformation in a generation,
including the Better Public Services change
programme, and strengthening functional
leaderships across all central government
agencies. Globally, governments need to
achieve more with less, driving the need for
more innovative ways of working. We’ve
put together this resource to demonstrate
how open source technology is driving
collaboration and flexible learning throughout
the New Zealand Government, and how
the same principles can be applied within
governments worldwide.
A quiet, but innovative revolution has been
underway among government and other
public sector organisations in New Zealand
over the past five years.
The Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) is
the most recent New Zealand Government
department to implement Totara LMS. It
has joined a Totara LMS public sector ‘club’
consisting of ten of the biggest government
departments in the country, three of the
largest District Health Boards, numerous
hospitals, and other key public sector
agencies and organisations.
The widespread adoption of Totara LMS
to support their learning and people
development strategies is transforming
learning throughout the public sector.
Did you know… nearly 80,000
users access their learning
via Totara LMS across 10 key
government departments in
New Zealand?

Who is using Totara
LMS?
Organisations worldwide are using Totara LMS
to drive performance and achieve impressive
results. It is quickly becoming the LMS of
choice within the New Zealand Government,
and is currently being used by these
departments and more...

And it’s not just New Zealand’s government
making the most of Totara LMS - it’s
also popular with other public sector
organisations.

Why have government
agencies adopted
Totara LMS?
“We like the flexibility of
customisations which
also means there is so
much future potential!”
Ministry of Justice
Collaboration and freedom to
innovate
Widespread adoption of open source
learning management system Totara LMS
has underpinned many of the transformation
efforts, state sector change programmes
and success stories. During discussions with
team members from several government
departments, there emerged some clear
reasons why Totara LMS was their preferred
choice. The low cost of annual subscriptions
for organisations with many thousands of
users was a key factor, as public sector
agencies need to show good value-for-money
use of public funds and return on investment.
However, there were three more compelling
reasons:
Employment
Services
Parliamentary
Service
Government inter-departmental
collaboration
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Health
Common goals
Content sharing
Same challenges
Joint experiences
Lobby future direction
Share costs (customisations)
Finance
1. Collaboration drives better outcomes and
lower costs: the support and exchange of
ideas and experiences among the Government
Totara User community in New Zealand
2. Freedom to innovate through customisation
and integration - a powerful advantage of open
source software
3. A rich, growing feature set offers great value
for money for organisations of all sizes
Social Services
Taxation
Justice

Key hosting and integration
considerations
Another important factor highlighted by
Government users is the ability to select
where the system is hosted. Totara Learning
products are distributed and available via a
specially selected global network of solution
partners. For New Zealand Government
agencies, the ability to have locally approved
and trusted New Zealand Partners either
assist with implementation into their own
hosted IT infrastructure or in approved
secure locally hosted environments
ensures a high-quality and secure service.
Furthermore, agencies can integrate Totara
LMS with internal HRIS systems to automate
workflow and reduce administrative
overhead for smarter working.
IN FOCUS:
Ministry of Primary Industries
For the Ministry of Primary Industries,
security was top of mind when implementing
an LMS, as well as a good user experience
and cost efficiencies. They have achieved
all this with Totara LMS. Firstly, they
merged data from three other learning
platforms and Catalyst IT helped create a
single sign-on (SSO) Totara LMS solution
integrated with MPI’s central authentication
service, providing users with transparent
authentication via Active Directory within
the organisation and RealMe (New Zealand
public identity provider) for external users.
Kineo Pacific helped to theme the site
and users have responded that the LMS
is far more user friendly and intuitive than
the previous solution. Managers have also
given excellent feedback, saying that it
has improved the face-to-face booking
experience, moving from spreadsheets and
email to Totara LMS’s inbuilt face-to-face
system, which has saved administration time
and made the process smoother and more
manageable.
Functionally rich corporate
learning solution
Totara LMS has enabled public sector
organisations to fundamentally change
the way they design and deliver learning
experiences. The Ministry of Business,
Innovation and Employment, for example,
has used Totara LMS to underpin its
move to blended learning and offer wider
access to learning opportunities both for
its internal staff and external user groups.
New Zealand Customs has implemented a
range of blended onboarding programmes
tailored to different target groups, making
development pathways, course opportunities
and general progress information visible to
both learners and managers so that they can
take full ownership over further performance
development actions.
“Our LMS will change
the face of learning and
development for Customs.
It will become the fabric of
how we learn and measure
performance.”
New Zealand Customs
There are many configuration options open
to System Administrators in Totara LMS.
Organisations can use as much or as little of
the available functionality at any time placing
control over both short and longer term
strategies with the system internally, reducing
reliance on external vendor support. This can
lead to significant savings in running costs.

‘Flexibility’ is cited too as a big advantage.
Team members from the Ministry of Business
Innovation and Employment talked about the
advantages of the ‘multiple approaches and
flexibility’ of the system.
The powerful ability to direct learning
programmes at target groups and create
reports to support compliance monitoring
was highlighted as a key benefit for
many Government agencies who need
to demonstrate best practice in following
mandatory regulation, such as the new
health and safety regulations recently
introduced in New Zealand.
IN FOCUS:
New Zealand Customs
New Zealand Customs now benefits from
many more online development opportunities
for its dispersed workforce. Totara LMS
also supports the organisation’s new selfservice
approach to learning, enabling staff
to manage their own learning and progress
towards compliance requirements.
“There are lots of good
features that can be used
to suit the requirements
of different business user
groups.”
Ministry of Justice
New Zealand Customs is responsible for
ensuring the security of New Zealand’s
borders, and comprises more than 1,200
employees across the country. With a large,
geographically dispersed team, New Zealand
Customs wanted to make the learning
management process easier and more
efficient while ensuring everyone adhered
to the strict compliance requirements and
regulations.
New Zealand Customs worked with Totara
Partner Catalyst, who worked with Customs’
IT architects to uphold their stringent security
requirements. Catalyst also facilitated the
smooth migration of existing learning records
from a legacy HR system to Totara LMS,
as well as creating an on-premise solution
with single sign-on (SSO) integration. The
Program feature in Totara LMS also enabled
Customs to create work area frameworks to
direct learners to the most relevant learning
content.

The power of
collaboration
Underpinning the widespread adoption of
Totara LMS is the emergence of the ‘NZ Totara
User Group’. Existing and prospective users
from many different organisations meet every
month, usually at a government location or a
Totara Partner premises. The group spends at
least a half day on sharing, collaborating and
learning from each other as well as from invited
speakers, all with the aim of getting the most
out of their solutions.
Totara’s open philosophy has been embraced
by this community of users, recognising that
they have common goals and challenges,
so together they can be more effective in
attaining their objectives. In working together,
these government departments can share
ideas, success stories and what hasn’t
worked for time and cost savings and more
creative solutions to common challenges.
With governments worldwide under increasing
pressure to deliver more for less, the
collaborative approach championed by the
New Zealand Government is a prime example
of the results that can be achieved through
working together.

Government learning
professionals working
and learning together
Attendees of the Totara Government User
Group were initially just from Government
departments; however they’ve opened the
doors to wider public sector and health
agencies and even ‘guest’ organisations who
may be considering adopting Totara Learning
products.
Desley Simmonds, Community Manager from
the Accident Compensation Corporation, says
that ‘they are a bit more relaxed now about
letting in others to share the meetings with
them’. Some LMS site administrators come
prior to setting up their own sites too as a
means of ‘getting started’ and reducing their
implementation learning curve.
“As a portal to
collaborative practice,
Totara LMS has facilitated
collaboration in many
projects.”
MBIE
The group sets the agenda with the issues
they want to discuss, and sometimes that
means inviting in a speaker. The style is
informal and trust is high. As practitioners
they keep it collaborative and promote as
much knowledge sharing during the event
as possible. Sometimes attendees will even
agree to ‘shadow’ each other in their own
organisations to learn more. Apart from
practical presentations, a highlight of the
meeting is the ‘Knowledge Café’, when
participants get into groups to discuss a
challenging topic, which can range from a
‘futuristic’ scenario or strategic ideas for
resolving specific business goals, to their
most desired future Totara LMS and Social
features. This can result in joint initiatives, as
the group agree to work on ‘mini projects’
from time to time.
IN FOCUS:
Ministry of Justice
The New Zealand Ministry of Justice is the
lead justice sector agency in New Zealand,
and supports the country’s judiciary. With
over 3,500 employees across New Zealand,
they needed a learning platform that
engaged learners and met the needs of the
business simultaneously. They were looking
for a solution which would provide a blended
onboarding experience to new recruits,
support high levels of traffic, integrate with
current HR systems and offer a custombranded,
multi-device theme to deliver
consistent learning across 103 locations.
The Ministry of Justice worked with Kineo
Pacific to create a Totara LMS called
THRIVE, which is now a central learning
platform for all employees. It is custom
branded with a responsive theme, meaning
employees can now undertake multi-device
learning. It also works seamlessly with the
Ministry of Justice’s existing HRIS software,
and the audience functionality in Totara LMS
has improved the learning experience with
more accurate user data. Since its launch in
July 2015, usage of the LMS has increased
by over 100%, and THRIVE has helped
break down silos created by distance and a
lack of access to training, with around 80%
of employees accessing the platform since
its launch, and 64% returning to do more
than one course.

Influencing future
features and
functionality
At a tactical level, the collaborative ideas and
discussions from the Totara Government
user group provide great feedback for Totara
Learning’s product development team and
its global network of Partners. Attendees can
leverage the community to identify common
challenges or requirements and work beyond
individual agencies to advance ‘upstream
customisations’ that they may decide to work
on.
The user group is currently piloting Totara
Social to facilitate inter-organisation knowledge
sharing, implement informal learning and to
explore ways in which structured social sharing
can deliver productivity and performance
improvements that can save time and money
and deliver a higher quality of service to
citizens.
Overall the observable trend in the group has
been to see members’ growing knowledge
and expertise in Totara product configuration
and blended learning design best practice. As
well as helping newcomers to the community,
deeper, more strategic and technical
conversations are taking place, which only
helps to advance the benefits these public
sector agencies are deriving from their use of

New Zealand’s use of
open source learning
technologies provides
a replicable framework
for adoption
Totara LMS is being used right now throughout
the New Zealand Government to support
collaboration, sharing and innovation across
the organisation. The organisation as a whole
has taken a collaborative approach which
has built expertise and facilitated sustainable
development across departments. This has
ensured that the New Zealand Government
can continue to demonstrate compelling
returns on investment for their use of learning
technologies.
And it is clear how open source technology
like Totara LMS can be used to support this
collaborative approach in other governments
worldwide. Other governments around the
world can learn from the success achieved
in New Zealand, enabling them to start
reaping similar cost savings and productivity
improvements. Adopting an open, collaborative
philosophy built on open source platforms
has proved a resounding success for the New
Zealand Government, and we believe that this
can be replicated around the world for more
cost-effective, flexible and open learning.
Prospective
Public Sector
User seeking advice
Wider Community
Sharing
Government Totara LMS
User Group
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Common goals
Content sharing
Same challenges
Joint experiences
Lobby future direction
Share costs
Government
Agencies
Feedback to Totara
Team

With thanks to the Totara Partners
supporting these Government and
public sector groups:

To find out more about how Totara LMS is being used in the public sector worldwide, take a look at
our government case studies at www.totaralearning.com. If you would like to discuss your specific
requirements, please contact us at enquiry@totaralearning.com.