Finance minister hints at government department amalgamation plans

The finance minister is set to reveal proposals to reduce the number of government agencies, by telling ministries and departments to come up with plans for amalgamation. RNZ understands Nicola Willis will set out three proposals on Tuesday afternoon to create efficiencies in the public service, including amalgamating government agencies, more work on digitisation and using AI, and setting a target to reduce the public service headcount to 1 percent of the total population by 2029. Willis will reveal further details in a pre-Budget speech to Business North Harbour. On Monday evening, she told Newstalk ZB's Heather du Plessis-Allan the government would be taking the approach of asking the public service to come back with options on "logical" mergers. Asked whether some departments would be cut altogether, Willis said there were two ways of coming at the same problem, pointing to the new Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions, and Transport, which will replace the Ministry for the Environment, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Ministry of Transport, and the local government functions of the Department of Internal Affairs. "So, in effect, some of those entities don't exist anymore, but what you've got is one joined up agency that delivers all of the decent things those agencies were delivering in a much more coherent way," Willis said. "So we want to do more of that approach of saying, 'well, what actually would make more sense to come together under one umbrella and one agency, and would actually lead to a better service to the customers it's trying to serve, and would be more efficient?'" Last year, the Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche told Mata he was looking at a shakeup of agencies. At the time, he said all options were on the table, but indicated ministries' functions and branding would remain. Willis told Newstalk ZB she would release figures on reducing the headcount during her speech, but said she accepted New Zealand would continue to have a growing population, and growing demands for the delivery of public services. "We'll continue to incarcerate people in our prisons, deliver welfare support to families, so those things will continue, but absolutely we can do more of that using digital tools, being more efficient. We don't need as many departments to do it. We've got some awesome public servants. They're smart cookies, but ultimately we tie them in bureaucracy a lot at the moment." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.