Better public Services The Advisory Group Report

John R. Martin was a public servant for over thirty years and then taught public administration at Victoria University for over a decade. On 15 March 2012 the prime minister released the report of the Better Public Services advisory and governance group appointed in May 2011 (the report had been completed in November 2011 but release was delayed over the election period) (Better Public Services Advisory Group (BPSAG), 2011). Public attention focused on the creation of a new ‘business-facing’ government department, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and on the ten expectations that collectively made up ‘a new results-driven focus for the public service’, to which the prime minister devoted his speech of 15 March 2012 (Key, 2012). Other initiatives, such as the pooling of justice sector budgets, have attracted little comment in the media but open up possibilities for greater inter-agency collaboration. In this article I comment from an historical perspective on three selected aspects of the Better Public Services report: coordination and a unified career public service; ministerial responsibility; and the place of the State Services Commission. A review of the public sector in today’s circumstances is welcome. But it is also timely to reassert the values that have served New Zealand well through the century since the Public Service Act 1912.