Bennett Paula: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Bennett Paula: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:661;Page:9501] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I am grateful for the opportunity to stand up and talk a bit in the financial review debate about what the Ministry of Social Development has been doing and how it goes about that. The Ministry has departmental appropriations of $1.1 billion a year of which $950 million is in running costs. The Ministry has met $168 million in cost increases up to June 2009 through efficiency gains and cost-reduction activities. It has plans for a further $272 million in gains over the next 3 years. Its value-for-money programme looks at the potential for those sorts of efficiency gains through measures such as self-service online tools and options that reduce the level of administration. 
It has been quite a focus for us that we get back to people. We are back to how we work with people how we are actually managing them in their lives and helping them by working alongside them. If one asked me in all honesty how we were going to make the biggest difference for those who are dependent on welfare both short-term and long-term I would say that it comes down to the relationship they have with their case managers how they work together how we give them the right sort of incentives with the right sort of obligations and how we are able to back that up with that people contact. 
A big part of this past year and a big part of the financial review has been about cutting down on some of the administration side so that we free up people to spend money on the stuff that really matters. Goodness knows there is a lot of efficiency to be made in there and I wanted to share some of it with the Committee because I think that that is the way forward particularly for Work and Income and for the Ministry of Social Development. 
Let me give members a couple of real examples because at the end of the day that is what matters. Study Link made 400000 transactions online via MyStudyLink—that is 400000 transactions were made online via MyStudyLink. Ninety-seven percent of student loan and student allowance applications were made online. A mail online service was implemented on 1 November 2009 and since then 168919 letters have been viewed online. So something as simple as saying to young people that they can view their mail online instead of having it posted to them has meant that the cost savings and the efficiency gains have been substantial. It means that there are people actually working with people which I think is what will make a difference. 
Let me talk about the payment card. In 2009 food grants made up half of hardship assistance payments. There were 501000 payments totalling $52 million—501000 payments totalling $52 million. That is big big bucks. Introduced in November again was a payment card for food special need grants. Between November 2009 and January 2010 the time saved by the use of payment cards was approximately 7 minutes per application. That does not sound very interesting—7 minutes. What is that? How is that going to go? But that translates to approximately 11700 case management hours. So once we add up the volume we are dealing with and cut that time down to 7 minutes 11700 case management hours on pure administration have been taken away. It means that those people can be spending that time with people and on stuff that really does matter. 
Approximately $350000 was saved as well due to the unspent amounts on those cards. What happened was that when people had the amount on letters it stayed on the letters; it stayed with whomever they spent the money with—with the supermarket. Now that that money is not being withdrawn from the Government’s bank account it means that it is being saved and that we can invest it back into people. It is that stuff that will make the ultimate difference. 
What we have also done which we have been really fast-tracking over the last few months is bring in high-trust contracts. In the past under Labour we heard a lot about integrated contracts and what they were—and this one really gets me! With integrated contracts Labour would have an organisation that had 7 contracts. It would have those seven add another one on top and call it an integrated contract. But none of those seven would be changed; none of those seven would be taken away. Instead Labour would just add another one and say that that was integrated. What we have done instead is bring in a high-trust contract. That means that all of those seven are taken away. They are replaced by a 3-page document that says “We actually work together in this. We are focused on the people that we want to help.” instead of it being about who has the power and what the relationship looks like and the constant partnership stuff that we used to hear about under the previous Government. We say that instead of actually focusing on each other and what that relationship looks like how about we focus outwardly and on to people—the people we all agree we want to work with. The results have been outstanding.