New 'Implementation Unit' to tackle faltering mental health rollout and 'Jobs for Nature'

The Minister of Conservation and Land Information Eugenie Sage making an announcement about Jobs for Nature projects in July 2020. Photo / File

The Government's new "Implementation Unit" established in recent months is the second iteration of the idea, and the latest plan comes with a budget of more than $400,000 for outside consultants.

Labour's first effort at providing an extra layer of oversight for government project delivery was made last year, and ran from July to October, Treasury documents show.

This unit was made up of Beehive staff within Finance Minister Grant Robertson's office, and its purpose was specific to showing "successful delivery" of Budget 2020 and
Covid-19 Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF) projects in advance of last year's election, a June letter from the Office of the Prime Minister advised ministers.

The Treasury supplied support to the unit through progress reports on more than 100 CRRF initiatives.

The new Implementation Unit, funded through Budget 2021, also reports to Robertson, in his role as Deputy Prime Minister, but the tiny team of five people is housed within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC). Its budget also created two additional roles at the Treasury.

The new unit is also aimed at heading off delivery problems for key Government initiatives, but it will take a more deep and focused approach to monitoring and managing just a handful of faltering projects.

Documents submitted for Budget 2021 approval allow $200,000 for the current financial year and $200,000 for next year for "external advice" to the new unit.

British-based Delivery Associates was retained last December to advise the DPMC on establishing the unit.

The unit's executive director, Katrina Casey, confirmed that to date $10,000 has been spent on Delivery Associates, but she said no further work has been contracted from the consultancy which was founded and is chaired by Sir Michael Barber, who created and led the Delivery Unit of Tony Blair's Labour Government in the early 2000s.

"At this time no funding has been committed to or is planned to be spent on Delivery Associates for any work in 21/22 or 22/23. There will be a review undertaken at some stage of the Implementation Unit, but no decisions or commitments have been made about how that review would be done or who would do it.

The new Implementation Unit reports to Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson. Photo / Mark Mitchell

A note in the budget submission says the "external advice" is to ensure the unit can "effectively leverage experts as required, for purposes such as conducting stakeholder engagement surveys, [and] undertaking a review of the unit…"

A spokesperson for Robertson confirmed the unit is currently examining the "mental health rollout" and the CRRF-funded Jobs for Nature spending.

In Budget 2019, the Government announced a $1.9 billion mental health package, but much of the money is unspent, and very little in the way of additional mental health facilities or care have been added to the health system.

In June, Health Minister Andrew Little told the Herald he was extraordinarily frustrated with the slow pace of delivery.

The unit is currently examining the "mental health rollout". Photo / Getty Images

Jobs for Nature is a Covid-19-related job creation initiative that spans five government agencies, including the Ministry for the Environment and Land Information New Zealand.

Treasury reporting to the initial Implementation Unit last year flagged these associated programmes as a concern. The $1.2b in spending was originally intended to fuel the creation of 11,000 jobs because the Government feared massively escalating unemployment would result from the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, much of the Jobs for Nature job creation was slow and appears to be taking place only now, as a labour shortage is gripping the country and unemployment sits at a very low 4 per cent.
In a September 2020 report to the first Implementation Unit, Treasury reported that only 438 jobs had been created through the initiative.

The cost of job creation across the programmes has also been worryingly high. For example, the Treasury warned that the initiative for containing wallabies has cost $685,000 per job.

The National Party's shadow treasurer, Andrew Bayly, called the successive implementation initiatives "a shambles".

"Firstly, it's a sign government ministers are not actively overseeing their own departments. But it is also just absolutely strange that we now have a government entity, run by an official from Government [Casey moved to the DPMC from the Ministry of Education], reporting to the Deputy Prime Minister [Robertson] who has spent his entire working life working for Government ... there is just no commercial experience of delivery here."

Act's David Seymour called the units an "admission from Government that it hasn't been delivering for the past four years".

The new unit's total budget over this year and next is some $5m (including $400,000 allowed for consultants).

Delivery Associates advice to the DPMC suggested the unit's main work should agree delivery plans with government agencies; assemble and analyse data and assess progress; identify and report on problems; and help agencies and regularly convene with the Deputy Prime Minister, ministers and agencies to "facilitate solution-oriented conversations".

It recommended the unit closely follow a small number of "high-risk" projects, and in day-to-day working with government agencies, that its staff take a "trust but verify" approach to the information that agencies share.