Why new ministers need proper training to avoid costly mistakes – Richard Prebble
We would not ask a pilot to fly a Boeing 787 without extensive training.
Yet we expect first-term ministers to take charge of departments with thousands of employees and budgets of billions of dollars, having received virtually no training.
The only legal qualification to become a Cabinet minister is to be a Member of Parliament.
To stand for Parliament, you are only required to be on the Electoral Roll.
Experience in politics is excellent preparation for answering questions in Parliament, but no help in reading a departmental balance sheet.
Campaigning, being an MP and leading a government department each require different skills.
For ministers content to be their department’s spokesman, fight for its budget and answer questions in Parliament, an MP’s skills are sufficient.
Ministers who want to lead rather than be led by their departments need practical advice on how to do so without making costly mistakes.
Those determined to reform their departments need that advice most of all.
Every year we spend tens of millions of dollars training public servants.
We spend virtually nothing preparing the ministers responsible for leading them.
Every former minister I have spoken to says the same thing: “I wish I had known then what I know now.”
The taxpayer should not have to pay for every minister’s lack of job training.
Minister Erica Stanford recently revealed that officials concealed from her for more than two years that they had spent over $30 million on a computer system so dysfunctional it has now been abandoned.
Stanford is one of the Government’s most capable ministers. Had she received decent advice on the questions experienced ministers ask, I suspect she would have uncovered the problem much sooner.
I discovered bureaucracies hide their computer projects when I was Minister of Railways.
On a flight to Wellington an IBM salesman cheerfully introduced himself and said that IBM was about to sign a contract to develop a “world-leading” payroll system for New Zealand Railways.
I had received no briefing that Railways was purchasing a bespoke payroll system. When I got to my office I rang the general manager for an explanation.
After a century of special allowances, penalty rates and “wet money”, railway wages had become extraordinarily complicated. An army of payroll clerks struggled to get them right.
Instead of commissioning the world’s most complicated payroll system, we negotiated a simpler wage structure with the unions and bought an off-the-shelf payroll programme.
When David Lange appointed me New Zealand’s first Minister for State-Owned Enterprises, I inherited responsibility for 21 government businesses.
At my first meeting with every chief executive, I asked about the finances, the business plan and then one final question.
“Tell me about your computer system.”
Then I would lean forward and quietly ask, “Is it as bad as I have heard?”
Every time I received the same reaction. They assumed I already knew. Out would come a horror story.
One chief executive admitted that his organisation had bought an overseas computer system, but it was in Swedish. Tens of millions had been spent trying to get it to work in English. The programmers wanted millions more.
“Will it ever work in English?” I asked.
“Never as intended.”
“Why not cancel it?”
“Can we? We have spent so much.”
On the spot I authorised the cancellation.
The bureaucracy often believes a computer program is the answer to a problem. But it is still garbage in, garbage out.
After the election, if Erica Stanford is appointed to another portfolio, I believe one of her first questions will be: “Tell me about the computer system. Is it as bad as I have heard?”
That knowledge has cost taxpayers millions of dollars for her to learn.
When I first became an MP there was no induction. The first useful advice I received came from a taxi driver, who told me which entrance to use.
When I became party whip, I introduced an induction programme for new MPs. Today it lasts two days and is led by experienced MPs from across Parliament.
There is no equivalent induction for new ministers. Departments provide written briefings on their portfolios, but there is no advice on how to lead a government department.
The people best qualified to teach ministers are former ministers who have run large departments. In my view, had Erica Stanford received a proper induction, a former minister would have warned her to seek independent evidence that any major computer project was genuinely on track.
Today it costs taxpayers millions of dollars for each generation of ministers to learn on the job. Ideally, Ministerial Services would provide a course for MPs who aspire to become ministers.
At the very least, every new minister should receive an induction from former ministers so that hard-won lessons are passed on instead of being learned all over again.
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