Summary of our report

Why we did this work

About 34% of New Zealand’s population (or more than 1.7 million people) live in Auckland, and the region produces about 37% of the country’s gross domestic product. Auckland has the largest number of central government and local government employees in the country.

Given Auckland’s significance to New Zealand, and the scale of the public sector in the region, we wanted to understand how well public organisations report on their performance in Auckland.

What we found

It is difficult to get a complete picture of public sector performance in Auckland. Some public organisations report on their performance in Auckland, while others only report at a national level. There is also no readily available information on total amount of public spending in Auckland.

Auckland Council clearly reports on its spending and performance in the region, but most central government organisations only report their spending and performance at a national level. This makes it difficult to accurately determine how much public money central government is spending in Auckland and what is being achieved.

Public organisations should consider how they could improve their performance reporting at a local level. We provide some good practice examples in this report. These examples highlight the use of accessible reporting frameworks and mechanisms to provide more meaningful and place-based performance information to Aucklanders.

What next?

Because it is difficult to fully assess how well the public sector is performing in Auckland, we have suggested three opportunities central government and local government organisations could take to support more place-based reporting on Auckland:

• Provide a clear outline of outcomes central and local government are looking to achieve in Auckland.
• Provide an overview of the key activities, programmes, and investments in Auckland.
• Provide more detailed and regular performance reporting.

In our view, these three opportunities would improve public accountability and the transparency of public spending in Auckland. We intend to monitor progress to see whether, and how, these opportunities have led to improvements.