Street Maryan: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to MembersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members[Sitting date: 11 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15474. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]4.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) to theMinister of State Services: Does he have any plans to introduce greater protection for New Zealand’s state sector integrity systems including the public service in the wake of Monday’s Transparency International New Zealand report?Hon TONY RYALL (Minister for State Owned Enterprises)on behalf of theMinister of State Services: A lot of work is already being done to further improve transparency and integrity and to combat bribery and corruption. New Zealand’s efforts in this area are regularly recognised including by Transparency International which rated New Zealand first equal in its latest perceptions of corruption rankings which were published just last week. The Government welcomes Transparency International’s views on how we can continue to improve our public systems and deliver better public services. We will be considering the recommendations in that report carefully.Hon Maryan Street: How does he plan to address the concerns expressed in the report about an erosion of the convention that public servants provide the Government of the day with free and frank advice an apparent weakening of the quality of policy advice that public servants provide and perceived non - merit-based appointments to public boards?Hon TONY RYALL: Ministers do expect to receive free and frank advice from officials as that member will know from her previous roles. In fact the State Sector Act has recently been amended to include new stewardship requirements on chief executives which specifically include the requirements to provide free and frank advice to Ministers and to maintain the capacity to offer free and frank advice to successive Governments. The amended Act also includes the responsibility of chief executives to be responsive to matters relating to the collective interests of the Government.Hon Maryan Street: Is he aware of a culture of fear developing in the Public Service resulting in officials being unable to give free and frank advice especially in the Ministry of Health and the Department of Conservation; if so does he intend to do anything about those relationships between Ministers and officials?Hon TONY RYALL: I have to say I do not agree with that at all. If there is a culture of fear in the Ministry of Health I have got to say that it is not working because if you have read any of the national newspapers in the last week you will have found out that people are not at all backward in coming forward with their views.Hon Maryan Street: Does he agree with the report that the intrusion of central government into local government decision-making has caused people concern; if so how does he intend to address this?Hon TONY RYALL: This Government has a mandate particularly in respect of the Resource Management Act to improve those processes in local government. Clearly the legislation is a key part of that. Most people in New Zealand think that that is a jolly good thing.Grant Robertson: How can he have confidence in the integrity of the State sector information and communications technology systems when the department responsible for the overall oversight of information and communications technology the Department of Internal Affairs has its own information and communications technology project that is now requiring a doubling of resources and a 5-year extension just to have any outcomes at all?Hon TONY RYALL: As the acting Minister I am not in a position to be able to comment on that. What I do know though is that this Government takes very seriously the need to have high performance in respect of these issues. As the member knows we have had difficulty around one particular project in the education sector and that is informing better performance elsewhere across the State sector.