Phase Two: Organisational Review: Final Report

22 August 2003

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Current Situation

• Limitations of the Current Organisational Arrangements

16. This section will focus on the way in which the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and Energy Safety Service Branch has been organised until 1 July 2003 rather than the arrangement put in place in the interim period between the Manager, Standards and Safety leaving and the implementation of Phase Two.

17. A copy of the branch organisation chart as at 1 July 2003 is attached as Appendix Four, together with a summary of the Ministry's existing core functions.

Limitations of the Current Organisational Arrangements

18. Creating Confident Consumers made the point that while "nothing was broken" within the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, there were a number of issues that the Ministry must address in order to achieve its objectives. Some of these issues pertained simply to strengthening capability. Others however, have at their core the "culture" of the Ministry, its focus, how it shared information, the way it viewed its networks and its links with its parent Ministry. For example, why is it that we do not better utilise our networks and contacts to tell us something about consumer issues. Why are the links between policy and operations not as strong as you would imagine in a Ministry, which is predominantly situated on one floor?

19. In considering the way in which the Ministry of Consumer Affairs operates, I consulted a number of previous reviews and management planning documents. The Leadership programme operated by the Ministry of Economic Development and the subsequent role clarity exercise also helped to shed light on some of the organisational issues which could limit the Ministry's ability to achieve the strategic direction set for it. They include:

• Lack of clarity around roles (including accountabilities and authorities), particularly with, but not restricted to, the management layers within the Standards and Safety Service. This has led to significant problems in recent times in terms of budget and risk management in the Energy Safety area. Other problematic areas include the authorities associated with the Communications Manager position and the roles and responsibilities of some administrative support staff.
• Accountabilities and authorities that do not support a branch-wide focus (managers in particular are not held accountable for understanding the work of colleagues and making them more successful through their contributions).
• Span of control, geographical or resourcing issues has resulted in managers not having enough time to put into personnel and strategic leadership in their teams.
• Systems (output set-up and planning, budgeting and prioritisation systems) and structures reinforce an inward-looking "silo"-approach. [3]
• Currently little to no research, evaluative or data analysis capability - we don't know if what we are or others are doing is achieving its objectives.
• A consumer information service that is focussed predominantly on information to consumers and traders, rather than information about consumer and trader experiences and behaviours.
• Lack of engagement of operational staff early and on an on-going basis in policy projects or failure to consult with teams with overlapping interest or expertise can lead to potentially problematic outcomes.
• A "Silo-approach" which means that:
  • support staff are undertaking the same general activities such as formatting, organising travel etc for small groups of staff across the Ministry, a centralised approach may be a more efficient way of organising this.
  • conversely the silo approach means that no real consideration has been given to the types of administrative support required across the branch as a whole. For example, there is only one person in the whole branch who can format discussion documents or use the "on-line template" to transfer documents to HTML, if this person is away, this work cannot occur.
  • resource production and management occurs regularly in at least three different parts of the branch (CIS, Consumer Safety, and Energy Safety Service) , with little or no consultation or collaboration and in many cases without a clear business case being developed to support resource use.
  • Teams think of their budgets on a unit rather than branch-wide basis and are generally fairly reluctant to identify resources that could be used in this way. This is somewhat at odds with the view the branch tends to have of itself as having a culture of "supporting each other".
  • We have two communication advisor positions within one branch with no real connection between the two roles.

Some of these issues can be partially addressed by structural solutions (e.g. superfluous management layers, resource production occurring across many different parts of the branch and administrative support coordination). Structural solutions are only ever part of the answer, however. Equally, if not more important, are the incentives that systems and processes can set up that work against effective cross-branch behaviours. The responsibility for putting in place and reviewing these systems rests with the General Manager, together with the management team.

[3] These points were also made in the 1997 Ministry of Consumer Affairs Review of Policy Section/Work and Management Report (July 1997) and the Ministry of Consumer Affairs Review of Planning Processes (June 2002).

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