People with office jobs typically find it hard to explain what they do. Government officials are no exception. Government work is like one of the inkblot tests psychologists used to show patients – everyone sees something different. A new report from the New Zealand Initiative, Demystifying the State, is the first of two that look more closely at what happens in the state and how we should think about reforming it

Consider debates about the number of government officials or “public servants”. I don’t mean doctors, teachers or police, but the officials managing and advising on the systems that employ them. The headcount of officials went from 30,004 in 2000 to 64,771 in 2023. If we asked the doctors, teachers and police if all those extra public servants have made their jobs easier, what would they say?

Even experts tend to see government workers – as either noble heroes or self-interested individuals. Former Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, now an academic, calls them heroes. Similarly, Peter Hughes, the former head of the public service, speaks of the "spirit of service" that, he believes, has blessed many working in Wellington.

In reality, government work is mostly not fine ideas or grand gestures. It's about the usually humdrum work needed to turn politicians' promises into practical reality. It is where grand ideas become detailed policies that deliver buildings, workforce, payroll systems and functioning IT. It is unexciting, and that's exactly what effective governance needs to be.

It might be more entertaining to imagine government as something dramatic. However, if we want a better government, we must understand it realistically. It is neither a group of superheroes nor a den of villains. Public servants are people doing their jobs in large, complex workplaces, and those workplaces could benefit from some thoughtful improvements.

First, we should ditch some popular cliches. "Frontline staff," for instance. The original frontline was on a battlefield with opposing armies intent on killing each other. Frontline staff did the killing. What does it say that we happily apply the same term to doctors and teachers?

In the report, I argue that there is a mismatch between what we ask of the government and the reality of government organisations.

To manage its hundreds of thousands of staff, the government is split into 3,000 or so organisations. Each organisation has its own hierarchy. There are complex processes to ensure they co-operate with each other. To make such a system work, the people in those organisations take great care to get to know people in other organisations and what they do.

The government is more an ecosystem than a machine. The thirty or so elected ministers certainly do not control it. At best, they understand how to work with it to get what they need. Good governance is often about handling mundane but crucial details effectively. There are hard questions to ask about how well the New Zealand government does that and what might work better.

For instance, how much of what central government does needs to be done by central government? Many government departments have regional offices, but all those offices report to hierarchies of public servants based in Wellington.

Work and Income, for example, has eleven regions, each running as a satellite of a central office in Wellington. Do those long chains of managers and commissioners improve the service to people in need? Perhaps local Work and Income offices could report to local people instead?

In 2020, Winston Peters went to court because details of a benefit overpayment were leaked. During the case, it turned out that the State Services Commissioner thought “[t]he integrity of the public service was in issue”. That is fair enough – except that then he made decisions without keeping any record of why he had made them.

That matters. One reason that many abusers identified by the Royal Commission Report on Abuse in State Care were not prosecuted was a lack of records. Without records of government decision-making processes, there is no accountability.

It is always more fun to have stories full of heroes and villains. Much less fun, and harder to explain is the ordinary work of running government well. In that sense we are better off when the state is no fun at all.

To read the full article on the NZ Herald website, click here.