Maintaining long-term capability

The Ministry was established in 1995 as a stand-alone agency with a sole focus on fisheries. It commenced with minimum infrastructure and constrained resources. In the past five years new and expanded services have been funded by Government, which has resulted in the need and opportunity to review and enhance basic core infrastructure for the Ministry. The 2005/06 year has seen the culmination of a range of strategic and significant investments in the organisation that include:

• implementation of a feedback and complaints process for stakeholders to express their views and concerns in an objective way

• new external web site platform and content management systems to enable improved stakeholder access to fisheries and Ministry information

• new records and document management systems and procedures to maintain historical records, and access to new information, which will be rolled out over 2006/07

• new core financial management systems to be implemented for the start of the 2006/07 financial year

• tangata whenua and stakeholder relationship management tools and forums to support Ministry engagement with tangata whenua and stakeholders

• consolidation of all the Ministry's Wellington CBD based staff in one building from early in the 2006/07 year

• management and leadership development

• focus on individual staff development outcomes.

The Ministry needs to develop and maintain its organisational capability, invest in its people and be flexible to changes in the environment. Changed senior management and governance arrangements were completed in 2005/06. Work now in progress includes:

• realignment of the front line business groups, with initial work on designing a three-year organisational development plan for those businesses

• realignment on a national basis of the Compliance group

• developing the capability to take a stronger, more proactive leadership role in managing fisheries

• developing capability and improving flexibility through consultative change right throughout the organisation

• better-integrated fisheries focused systems and processes as the transition to fisheries plans progresses.

For 2006/07 and beyond, the Ministry will focus on:

• extracting maximum value from recent core infrastructure initiatives

• staff development and recruiting staff with the rights skills and experience

• providing systems that enable decisions to be made consistently and accurately, and in accordance with relevant standards

• taking advantage of technological innovation to inform stakeholders and the wider public about the fisheries management issues, processes and results

• ensuring that the services delivered to meet the fisheries outcomes are efficient and effective

• setting and adhering to approved financial management standards.

State Services development goals

The State Services Commission has established a series of goals for the New Zealand Public Service and the Ministry is now working on a number of initiatives to contribute to the achievement these development goals. The following table explains the Ministry's contributions.