Annual Report 2008: Part three - Key strategies

Developing our people and infrastructure

Figure 20 -
Development goals for the State Services

Development goals	By June 2010	Inland Revenue's 2007-08 position
Goal 1: Employer of choice
Ensure the state services is an employer of choice, attractive to high achievers with a commitment to service.	The state services is increasingly recognised as a professionally rewarding and desirable place to work where high performing state servants are committed to achieving results.	We improved our overall Gallup engagement survey score from 3.75 to 3.83 out of 5 (at December 2007). Our engagement survey indicates that our people see us as a good employer. We have strong and positive relationships with the unions that represent our people.
Goal 2: Networked state services
Use technology to transform the provision of services for New Zealanders.	Government shared infrastructure is used to deliver user-centred services and support joint results.	We migrated our existing e-services to our new portal in June 2008. We launched new and enhanced e-services for KiwiSaver and Working for Families Tax Credits customers. We are rolling out enhancements to our online authentication to allow businesses and organisations to self-manage their access.
Goal 3: Value for money state services
Use resources and powers in an efficient, appropriate and effective way.	Agencies demonstrate continued gains in the efficient and effective use of their resources and powers, consistent with government priorities.	We are mid-way though a three-year work programme to improve our ability to assess efficiency and effectiveness. We have managed both core and new business growth within our funding constraints, while continuing to deliver high levels of output performance.
Goal 4: Coordinated state agencies
Ensure the total contribution of government agencies is greater than the sum of its parts.	Agencies work together towards jointly-defined outcomes in response to government priorities and increasingly achieve measurable results by sharing capabilities and using effective networks	We work closely with other government agencies in the delivery of Working for Families Tax Credits, student loans and paid parental leave. We are part of a cross-agency governance board (with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Social Development) for the wider student support area. We also work closely with other agencies (for example, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Social Development) on issues that interact with the tax system.
Goal 5: Accessible state services
Enhance access, responsiveness and effectiveness, and improve New Zealanders' experiences of state services.	New Zealanders say agencies are increasingly working with them to design and deliver services to meet their diverse needs.	Our Customer Insight group develops our understanding of our customers and builds relationships with them and the groups that represent them. Our Design and Project Management group designs services to meet our customer's needs.
Goal 6: Trusted state services
Strengthen trust in the State Services and reinforce the spirit of service.	Agencies have in place the elements essential to support state servants' trustworthy behaviour.	Delivery of our induction orientation, leadership programmes and technical development training are ongoing and continue to build our people's competencies. All employees complete training related to our code of conduct and making judgments about appropriate behaviour.

Developing our people

Employee engagement

In our third Gallup engagement survey, conducted in October 2007, we improved our overall engagement score from 3.75 to 3.83 out of 5. We continue to be strong in providing opportunities to learn and grow and talking to our people about their progress. We also saw improvement in our people's ability to connect their work to Inland Revenue's mission and purpose over the last year.

We need to focus on establishing more clarity around job expectations and providing our people with the opportunities to do what they do best.

Building our peoples' knowledge and skills

It's critical that we maintain excellent technical skills and knowledge. We have continued developing and updating the Aspire training library, which provides technical training on tax and social policy legislation. We are developing training frameworks to help staff competency development. We are also reviewing and testing our training products to improve their effectiveness.

The review of technical training for roles requiring judgment in interpreting legislation has led to the establishment of a new Technical Training and Development Unit in the Office of the Chief Tax Counsel. The unit is responsible for leading and coordinating technical training for senior technical staff through working closely with other Inland Revenue groups with training responsibilities.

We are an approved training organisation with the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants, and have about 180 chartered and associated chartered accountants.

This year we also upgraded our learning management system (LMS) to improve training associated with legislative, service and technology changes. We worked with a number of other agencies in this upgrade to support inter-agency system alignment. The LMS was also used for the introduction of our new orientation course, which provides all new staff with a consistent induction.

Leadership development

This year we introduced a new leadership and management development framework that sets out what Inland Revenue is doing to develop our leadership capability. Core leadership programmes for team leaders and managers are delivered regularly and are being constantly refined.

We are improving our succession planning for critical roles to ensure our continued future performance. We are also piloting a programme to access leading management thinking from Harvard University and others, through the Deloitte Leadership Academy.

We have continued rolling out the Lominger competency framework for our management and human resources activities. We have developed success profiles for management positions using Lominger competencies which have been included in job expectations for those managers.

Recruitment and retention

This year we:

• began a review of the recruitment model being used in National Office to see if we should use the same model in the rest of Inland Revenue. The project will review our current practices to help improve retention, capability and attraction
• expanded our recruitment team and the capabilities and expertise they provide to Inland Revenue. We have also contracted preferred recruitment suppliers and the early results are encouraging
• continued rolling out our new approach to workforce planning. This helps us to understand and plan for recruitment and capability gaps, and manage change.

Our turnover of 12% was similar to the turnover in the previous two years (11.9%) and remains below the public sector average (13.6%). We have higher turnover among people who have worked at Inland Revenue for less than two years and in some specialist areas where there is high demand for skilled staff. We are using information sources including our engagement survey, exit information, a skill shortage review and a newly initiated cohort tracking study to help improve retention.

EEO/Diversity

In October 2007 we completed Inland Revenue's review on pay and employment equity. We developed a response plan from the review which focuses on:

• improving learning and development opportunities for part-time employees
• ensuring any differences in pay between females and males is explainable and justifiable
• understanding and removing potential barriers to women's over-representation in officer and administrative roles
• increasing female participation in management and senior management levels
• ensuring female and male performance percentage progression is equitable.

We expect to implement our response plan by the end of 2009.

As part of our new leadership and management development framework we are including a greater diversity focus to team leader training.

Developing our infrastructure

Information technology

In the last year we have further developed our information technology infrastructure to enable delivery of KiwiSaver, student loans changes, alignment of GST and provisional tax and other initiatives as well as delivering our core services. Key parts of our core systems infrastructure are becoming increasingly complex to manage because of the wide range of services we now deliver.

During the year we undertook work which identified that we need to reinvest in our infrastructure to ensure we can deliver the services we are asked to, now and in the future. We will use integrated packages, industry standard practices, end-to-end alignment and partnering (internal and external) to minimise cost and integration risk and reduce our delivery times to meet business requirements.

We are engaging with industry leaders and gathering the experiences from other tax administrations to evaluate our options to modernise our systems to support our future needs. Inland Revenue is working towards a transformation roadmap that will be used to guide a programme of activities over the next decade. The roadmap will be integrated with planned organisational priorities and existing investments in technology and infrastructure.

SAP ERP development programme

This programme integrates our existing HR, Payroll, Finance, Travel and expense claim processes into a new system that is configured to Inland Revenue's requirements and builds upon the current SAP system.

The integrated system allows us to:

• better manage employee information, enabling all staff to self-manage their information through one system (recruitment, performance reviews, pay changes, checking and booking leave/travel, and updating personal records etc)
• provide more accurate and current information, supporting our decision-making by improved HR and financial information which will lead to increased visibility, coordination and planning.

Enterprise Architecture

We have also developed our Enterprise Architecture (EA) framework that guides how we organise ourselves as a business. It gives us the linked view between strategy, business processes, systems and technologies. It helps capture in a common language what we do, how we do it, and how we link strategy (our plans) and execution (our actions). The EA framework has set a context for us to move forward towards our business transformation.

Enterprise Portfolio Management

An Enterprise Portfolio Management function has been established to help Inland Revenue prioritise and select business initiatives which represent sound strategic investments and monitor these to ensure the intent is maintained and the benefits are realised. This process looks at strategic alignment, value and risks as well as achievability and affordability of initiatives within the context of government and our customers' expectations. The aim is to ensure that we are investing in the right initiatives at the right time and doing them well.

Accommodation

Inland Revenue's objective is to have a modern, sustainable and flexible work environment that is cost-effective and appropriate for our business needs.

We have completed development of our new Christchurch building at 224 Cashel Street. All Christchurch staff were successfully moved to the new building by March 2008.

The Greater Wellington Property Project completed layout designs for the new One Featherston Street development in December 2007, and we are on target to start the move to the new building at the end of 2010. Leases on our current 14 buildings in Wellington are being managed to make sure that lease expiries are managed as cost-effectively as possible.

Sustainability

Our commitment to developing sustainability practices was recognised when we won two Govt³ Awards in October 2007. These awards were for waste reduction and staff engagement and we were commended for our performance in the office consumables category.

Carbon neutral public sector programme

We are one of the six lead agencies in the government's carbon neutral programme. This year we completed our first carbon emissions inventory with an emission total of 9,405.6 tonnes of CO2-e or 1,693 kg per FTE. We also developed a five-year emissions reduction plan and started taking actions to reduce and mitigate our carbon footprint. These include:

• our new Christchurch and Wellington buildings, which will reduce our energy and travel consumption
• continuous monitoring of our electricity and gas consumption, and energy audits in our major sites which lead to significant energy savings
• the approval of the first hybrid vehicles for our vehicle fleet. The percentage of low emissions vehicles will increase in future
• the introduction of video conferencing which reduces the need for travel. There have been over 500 video conference calls within Inland Revenue and a number of international video conference calls.

 

 

 

Date published: 15 May 2009

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