Under the Radar: international regulatory cooperation in ASEAN and New Zealand

International regulatory cooperation (IRC) refers to a diverse range of ways government regulators from different countries work together on developing and enforcing regulations. It has grown rapidly over the last 40 years, but it is little understood because much of it occurs beneath the radar. New research shows that ASEAN countries, along with the New Zealand government, are deeply imbedded in a complex web of international regulatory cooperation arrangements and agreements. Among ASEAN countries these groupings are predominately multilateral, bilateral and regional. In New Zealand, bilateral agreements with Australia predominate. Much of this cooperation occurs outside formal free trade agreements and the World Trade Organization’s Technical Barriers to Trade regime. Instead, regulators often work directly with their foreign counterparts through informal networks. The economic and technological drivers of the growth in international regulatory cooperation will persist in the post-Covid-19 era, providing continued impetus. For example, the need to manage international spillovers will increase the need for cooperation on regulatory policy design and enforcement and other regulatory practices to ensure that domestic regimes remain effective. The experience of Covid-19 has underlined the value of cooperative activities between states, such as information gathering and exchange. Dealing effectively with three of the principal issues currently confronting public policymakers – pandemics, climate change and effective governance of the digital environment – requires extensive international cooperation

Government as a Digital Standard Bearer

This article explores the key role the government can play in promoting the digital economy through the uptake of global digital standards. The potential of digital standards can be illustrated by the revolutionary impact in the 20th century of the introduction of barcodes on logistics, and the impact of standardised containers in accelerating the growth of world trade and global economic integration. In the 21st century, will digital platforms and standards play a similar role in enabling economic development in the information age? The key challenge in the digital standards space is for the government to find the sweet spot that is the equivalent of the Goldilocks zone – neither too hot nor too cold: this is where the government acts as a digital standard bearer – establishing the overall regulatory regime and then acting as an agile fast follower, not the leader getting out in front or going alone

Joint or Shared Accountability: Issues and Options

Responsible and responsive government depends on effective accountability – at all levels within the state. To this end, democratic governments have typically established strong vertical or hierarchical accountability relationships. New Zealand has been no exception. Indeed, the state sector reforms introduced in the late 1980s emphasised formal, vertical, straight-line accountability. Yet some of the work of government involves collaboration or joint working across multiple agencies. This implies the need for shared and horizontal accountability. It also casts doubt on the wisdom of relying too heavily on vertical accountability, not least because this may undermine joint working. How, then, should accountabilities be managed in the context of shared or joint working across agencies and what principles and considerations should guide policy makers when designing such accountability arrangements? With these issues in mind, this paper begins with an exploration of certain key concepts – vertical and horizontal accountability, responsibility, answerability and blame – and considers the limitations of vertical models of accountability within a Westminster-type parliamentary democracy. It then explores the nature and problems associated with joint working in the state sector where accountability for particular activities or outcomes is shared between two or more organisations. The paper argues that there are certain ‘hard’ factor and ‘soft factors’ that must be addressed to enable joint working. It is also argued that four key issues need to be considered when designing the institutional and associated accountability arrangements for joint working: depth, co-ordination and alignment, complexity, and separability. The paper concludes by exploring the ‘levers’ available to accommodate new ways of working across public agencies

Restructuring – an over-used lever for change in New Zealand’s state sector?

Is restructuring the hammer of organisational change in New Zealand’s state sector? A State Services Commission (SSC) survey of state sector employees in 2010 identified that 65 per cent of the 4,600 staff sampled had been involved in a merger or restructure during the previous two years, a sharp contrast with a similar survey of the federal government of the United States, which found that only 18 per cent were affected. These statistics raise questions which form the basis of this paper: why, how and to what effect are state sector organisations restructured in New Zealand? Our research started with a review of empirical data on restructuring and of perspectives from the literature on restructuring in the public and private sectors. We then explored these perspectives in three separate focus groups in May 2011, with chief executives, human resource managers and Public Service Association (PSA) delegates and organisers. Not surprisingly, chief executives (CEs) who initiate restructuring have a considerably more optimistic view about its role and impact than those who are affected by it. Annex One is a reflection piece written by one of the most experienced New Zealand public service chief executives, Christopher Blake, Chief Executive of the Department of Labour, (and Chief Executive of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra from 2012), provides a balance to the more sceptical argument presented in this paper. We conclude that restructuring has indeed become the ‘hammer’ of organisational change in New Zealand, a result of the ‘freedom to manage’ formula adopted in the late 1980s to break up a unified and ‘career for life’ bureaucracy that was seen to respond to slowly to the economic crises of the 1980s. Restructuring has become almost an addiction, reinforced by short, fixed term contracts for chief executives and a belief by those chief executives that their employer, the State Services Commission, expects them to be seen to be ‘taking charge’. Restructuring is a symbol and sometimes and substitute for action. It treats organisations as though they are mechanical objects with interchangeable parts rather than as living systems of people who have choices about the extent to which they will commit to their work. Organisational change receives considerably less scrutiny than funding proposals for major capital works. We advocate that restructuring should be subject to such scrutiny and chief executives need to act more like stewards of their organisations and less like owners

Patterns in inter-EU migrant crime in England: exploring the available data for indicators of knowledge requirements

This paper presents information about patterns of crime among EU migrants in England during 2011-2013. Based on data provided by English police forces about individuals charged with crimes during this period, it reports developments in EU migrant crime relating to prevalence, age, gender, nationalities, crime types, and geographical areas, making comparisons to crime data for England where appropriate. It discusses the possibility of profiling migrant crime, and highlights the complexity involved and interplay between different factors. It recommends the need for further study and analysis of migrant crime data, and considers policy implications

Helping family carers of people with dementia to cope is cost-effective

Much policy attention is now being focused on dementia, and this includes attention to the many thousands of unpaid family carers who support people with this most devastating of illnesses. Those carers are often very stressed by their caring responsibilities. A new coping strategy delivered to individual carers could help. We describe the strategy and show how a careful evaluation demonstrated that it was both effective and cost-effective

Managing for joint outcomes: connecting up the horizontal and the vertical

In pockets throughout the New Zealand public sector, ordinary officials are doing extraordinary things as they learn to do something very difficult: how to collaborate with people from other agencies. This occurs as they learn what needs to be done in managing for shared outcomes in complex policy cases. They appear to be doing excellent work in achieving desired outcomes for clients; yet they are doing so in spite of the public management system they work in, without much support from their organisations and the sector generally, and in the general absence of a learning culture. As there are no textbooks, they also confront the challenge of making it up as they go along. In several respects, therefore, their ways of working are unlike those assumed by traditional models of Westminster officials – and Kiwis may be better off because of it