Responses about our functional leadership recommendations

2 August 2021: We asked New Zealand Government Procurement (in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment) and Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission for an update on their response to recommendations we made in 2019 about the functional leadership of the government's procurement work.

Image from the cover of our functional leadership report

We wanted these updates because we are interested in providing increased public transparency on progress with addressing our recommendations.

In 2019, our report Using “functional leadership” to improve government procurement looked at how well public sector leadership over procurement was helping deliver on the expectations that public organisations understand and treat procurement as a strategic activity that is focused on outcomes.

New Zealand Government Procurement (part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment) and Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission (Te Kawa Mataaho) needed to strengthen the framework that underpins the procurement functional leadership role.

We recommended that New Zealand Government Procurement:

  • clearly define its leadership role and responsibilities for improving government procurement;
  • identify its stakeholders and revise its approach to stakeholder engagement to work more collaboratively with public organisations and central agencies;
  • put in place its planned national procurement strategy to give direction on priorities;
  • put in place performance indicators that would help it to monitor performance in improving government procurement; and
  • prepare and publish a regular report on government procurement.

We also recommended that Te Kawa Mataaho:

  • clarify its oversight role for procurement functional leadership in the public sector; and
  • as appropriate, clarify its oversight role for other functional leaders in the public sector.

Read what the Ministry and Te Kawa Mataaho have each said about their progress with those recommendations:

We have not audited the information in the two updates. However, as with all our work, we might choose to carry out a formal follow-up audit on our recommendations, or any aspect of the 2019 audit, in the future.

We will also seek further updates from the Ministry and from Te Kawa Mataaho where we consider it relevant to do so.